Director Pen Portraits: Hans-Christian Schmid

Hans-Christian Schmid has made his mark as a producer, director and writer. In addition, one of the most intriguing parts of his identity (and something that marks him as part of the new set of young German directors) is that range of genres and dramatic material he has worked in.

Qualified from Munich’s Hochschule für Fernsehen und Film, he studied scriptwriting at the University of Southern California, L.A. His first films included awarding-winning documentaries, Sekt Oder Selters (1981), about gambling machine addicts and Die Mechanik Des Wunders (1992) exploring the drama and personal tensions around a pilgrimage in his native Altötting.

His career has been built on long-standing associations with producers Jakob Claussen and Thomas Wöbke, and writer/director Michael Gutmann, all being involved in his debut feature Nach Fünf Im Urwald (It’s a Jungle Out There 1995), which also launched Franka Potente. Other acting discoveries include August Diehl (23 and Lichter), who went on to play the morally superior Adolf Burger in Die Fälscher (The Counterfeiters 2007).

In 2004, Schmid founded his own production company 23/5, which produced his own film, Requiem and Robert Thalheim’s 'Am Ende Kommen Touristen, (And Along Came Tourists), a contemporary examination of Auschwitz, the relationship of the town to its visitors. The vibrancy of the current German film industry can, I think, be explained in part by this entrepreneurial spirit demonstrated by its directors.

Requiem (2006), which followed the Hollywood version The Exorcism of Emily Rose is a far more controlled and powerful study of the death of an epileptic girl after a series of church-sanctioned exorcisms. Sandra Hueller’s intense central performance won her a Silver Bear at 2006 Berlinale, and the film allows the complexity of the character and the family relationships that conspired with simple religious belief. It, like the documentaries mentioned above, has strong roots in his biography and his early experiences of growing up in Bavaria.

He has been classified as part of a new German school of directors but in a recent interview classifies himself as working on the margins and “watching what they’re doing, although I’m pleased it exists.”