Oliver Hirschbiegel earned accolades for the 2004 German war film Downfall (“Der Untergang”), starring Bruno Ganz, which received an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film. The film, which chronicles the last days of Hitler and the collapse of the Nazi regime, also won several international awards.
Hirschbiegel made his feature film directorial debut on the 2001 psychological thriller “The Experiment” (“Das Experiment”), which was honored in Germany and other countries. Hirschbiegel won the Bavarian Film Award and the Montreal World Film Festival prize for Best Director, and the film won the Audience Award at the 2001 Bergen International Film Festival and the People Choice Award at the 2002 Istanbul International Film Festival.
Hirschbiegel followed with the 2002 film “MeinIetzter Film,” a 90-minute monologue about a woman in her fifties who wants torestart her life. He more recently directed the 2005 release “Ein Ganz gewhnlicherJude.”
Born in Hamburg, Germany, Hirschbiegel began his directing career in the German television industry, where he has been a major presence since the mid-1980s. In 1997, he won an RTL Golden Lion Award for his directing work on the TV movies “Das Urtei” (“The Verdict”), for which he also received an International Emmy Award nomination, and “Trickser.”
The following year, he won a Bavarian TV Award for the telefilm “Todfeinde: Die falsche Entscheidung.” He has also directed episodes of such television series as “Rex: A Cop’s Best Friend” (“Kommissar Rex”) and “Tatort.”
