Michael Haneke

Director

March 23, 1942 (84 years)

Munich, Germany

Biography

Michael Haneke (born March 23, 1942) is a German-Austrian filmmaker and writer best known for his bleak and disturbing style. His films often document problems and failures in modern society. Haneke has worked in television‚ theatre and cinema. He is also known for raising social issues in his work. Besides working as filmmaker he also teaches directing at the Filmacademy Vienna. At the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, his film The White Ribbon won the Palme d'Or for best film, and at the 67th Golden …

Filmography

7.3

The Piano Teacher

Erika Kohut, a sexually repressed piano teacher living with her domineering mother, meets a young man who starts romantically pursuing her.

6.8

Così fan tutte

Who loves whom in Così fan tutte, Mozart’s and Da Ponte’s cruelly comic reflection on desire, fidelity and betrayal? Or have the confusions to which the main characters subject one another ensured that in spite of the heartfelt love duets and superficially fleetfooted comedy nothing will work any longer and that a sense of emotional erosion has replaced true feelings? Così fan tutte is a timeless work full of questions that affect us all. The Academy Award-winning director Michael Haneke once said that he was merely being precise and did not want to distort reality. In only his second opera production after Don Giovanni in 2006, he presents what ARTE described as a “disillusioned vision of love in an ice-cold, realistic interpretation”.

6.6

Funny Games

When Ann, husband George, and son Georgie arrive at their holiday home they are visited by a pair of polite and seemingly pleasant young men. Armed with deceptively sweet smiles and some golf clubs, they proceed to terrorize and torture the tight-knit clan, giving them until the next day to survive.

7.3

Funny Games

Two psychotic young men take a mother, father, and son hostage in their vacation cabin and force them to play sadistic "games" with one another for their own amusement.

7.8

Amour

Georges and Anne are in their eighties. They are cultivated, retired music teachers. Their daughter, who is also a musician, lives abroad with her family. One day, Anne has a stroke, and the couple's bond of love is severely tested.

7.0

Caché

George, host of a television show focusing on literature, receives videos shot on the sly that feature his family, along with disturbing drawings that are difficult to interpret. He has no idea who has made and sent him the videos. Progressively, the contents of the videos become more personal, indicating that the sender has known George for a long time.

7.5

The White Ribbon

An aged tailor recalls his life as the schoolteacher of a small village in Northern Germany that was struck by a series of strange events in the year leading up to WWI.

6.2

Happy End

A well-to-do French family living in Calais deal with a series of setbacks and crises while paying little attention to the grim conditions in the refugee camps within a few miles of their home.

7.5

The Seventh Continent

Chronicles three years of a middle-class family seemingly caught up in their daily routines, troubled only by minor incidents. Behind their apparent calm and repetitive existence, however, they're planning something much more sinister.

6.7

Code Unknown

A series of events unfold like a chain reaction, all stemming from a minor event that brings the film's five characters together. Set in Paris, France, Anne is an actress whose boyfriend Georges photographs the war in Kosovo. Georges' brother, Jean, is looking for the entry code to Georges' apartment. These characters' lives interconnect with a Romanian immigrant and a deaf teacher.

6.9

Benny's Video

A 14-year-old video enthusiast obsessed with violent films decides to make one of his own and show it to his parents, with tragic results.

4.0

Lemmings

This two-part drama examines the fate of the generation of Austrians which came of age after World War II. The first part, "Arcadia," depicts the generational gap between 1950s teenagers and their parents, while the second part, "Injuries," shows this same group of characters twenty years later as they have grown up to become dysfunctional and suicidal adults. Regarded as the most significant of Michael Haneke’s early works, "Lemmings" contains incipient treatments of many of the themes he would later elaborate on in his theatrical features.

7.0

71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance

71 scenes revolving around multiple Viennese residents who are by chance involved with a senseless gun slaughter on Christmas Eve.

6.1

The Castle

When land surveyor K arrives at a small village that houses a castle, local authorities refuse to allow him to enter. As he tries to convince the officials that they sent for him, they clamp down with increasingly complicated bureaucratic obstacles.

6.3

Lumière & Company

40 international directors were asked to make a short film using the original Cinematographe invented by the Lumière Brothers, working under conditions similar to those of 1895. There were three rules: (1) The film could be no longer than 52 seconds, (2) no synchronized sound was permitted, and (3) no more than three takes.

6.1

Time of the Wolf

A middle-class family flees an unspecified disaster that has struck the city and takes refuge in their country home. They think this will allow them to escape the chaos, but they soon realize that getting away won’t be so easy.

6.0

Three Paths to the Lake

Elisabeth, a fifty year old woman, visits her old father in the outskirts of Klagenfurt. There, she reflects about her childhood and her romantic life.

5.3

Fraulein

A German woman and a former French prisoner of war live in 1950s Germany. Instead of playing a role in rebuilding her country, the heroine remains preoccupied with her personal affairs.

5.2

Who Was Edgar Allan?

A nihilistic art student meets the mysterious Edgar Allan at a coffee shop in Venice. The fascination for the older man soon turns into paranoia.

6.2

The Rebellion

The disabled ex-soldier Andreas Pum lost a leg for emperor and father land. After leaving the army he receives a license and a drehorgel. One day he gets into a controversy with a welldressed gentleman, disturbs the public order, and hits a policeman. Andreas Pum goes to jail, loses his license and becomes toilet guard in the Cafe Halali after his release. Only at the moment of death he recognizes that he was always too decent and too obedient.