Anecdotes

Although being a member of Germany's Social Democratic Party for many years, he supported Angela Merkel's electoral campaign in 2005.

Good friends with Nobel Prize winner Heinrich Böll.

In the 1970s, he was heavily criticized for sympathizing with terrorists of the Red Army Fraction.

Graduated from high school with Bertrand Tavernier (1959).

Received the highest French order "Officier de l'Ordre National de la Légion d'Honneur" (Knight in the national order of the Legion of Honour) from the French ambassador in Berlin (29 April 2002).

Ancient student at L'IDHEC (La FEMIS).

Member of the 'Official Competition' jury at the 23rd Cannes International Film Festival in 1970.

Participating in a student exchange program, he went to Paris in 1956 and lived there the following ten years.

Was in a long-term relationship with Ute Lemper. They planned to do a film together based on the life of Hildegard Knef. This was in the late 1980s, early 90s.

He graduated in political science at the Sorbonne, while at the same time studying film at the Institut des Hautes Etudes Cinematographiques, where he was friends with Bertrand Tavernier and met Louis Malle. Malle gave him his first job as his assistant director on Zazie in the Metro (1960), which continued with the films A Very Private Affair (1962), The Fire Within (1963) and Viva Maria! (1965).

Retrospective at the San Sebastián Film Festival (2002).

President of the 'Official Competition' jury at the 41st Berlin International Film Festival in 1991.

Has been professor for film and literature at the European Graduate School in Saas Fee, Switzerland, since 2001.

Is portrayed by Rüdiger Rudolph in Stoned (2005).

In 2009 he received the Camerimage Lifetime Achievement Award.

Schlöndorff teaches film and literature at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland, where he conducts an Intensive Summer Seminar.

After directing his second opera We Come to the River in 1976, Schlöndorff followed The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum with the equally political Coup de Grâce (1976). Based on a novel by French author Marguerite Yourcenar. A supporting actress in Coup de Grâce was Valeska Gert, a former cabaret dancer, circus performer and silent film actress who had worked with Greta Garbo and G. W. Pabst. This led to the documentary about her life, Just for Fun, Just for Play, in 1977.

Appalled at plans to destroy the historic film studios Babelsberg, Schlöndorff mounted a one-man campaign to save them in the early 1990s. He served as the chief executive for the UFA studio in Babelsberg between 1992 and 1997.

Schlöndorff was married to fellow film director Margarethe von Trotta from 1971 to 1991 and helped raise her son from her first marriage.

He was a prominent member of the New German Cinema of the late 1960s and early 1970s, which also included Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders, Margarethe von Trotta and Rainer Werner Fassbinder.

On 2019 he was awarded with Commander's cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Schlöndorff then contributed to the anthology film Germany in Autumn (1978), in which nine German filmmakers (including Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Alexander Kluge, Edgar Reitz and author Heinrich Böll) made short films depicting the hysteria and political chaos in West Germany during the German Autumn of 1977.

He is a German film director, screenwriter and producer who has worked in Germany, France and the United States.

He founded the production company Bioskop, which produced both his own and Margarethe von Trotta's films.

Schlöndorff made in Hollywood the movie 'Palmetto' (1998). In a noir plot, the film stars Woody Harrelson as a falsely accused journalist who was sent to jail after uncovering corruption in the local government. After getting out of jail and unable to find work, he encounters Rhea Malroux (Elisabeth Shue), a femme fatale who propositions him to help her extort money from her millionaire husband. The film was not a financial success and was Schlöndorff's last film in the US to date.

His family moved to Paris in 1956, where Schlöndorff won awards at school for his work in philosophy.