Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke (German: [ˈhaːnəkə]; born 23 March 1942) is an Austrian film director and screenwriter. His work often examines social issues and depicts the feelings of estrangement experienced by individuals in modern society. Haneke has made films in French, German, and English and has worked in television and theatre. He also teaches film direction at the Film Academy Vienna.

Haneke's first films were his "glaciation" trilogy, consisting of The Seventh Continent (1989), Benny's Video (1992), and 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance (1994), each of which depict a "coldly bureaucratic society in which genuine human relationships have been supplanted by a deep-seated collective malaise" and explore "the relationship among consumerism, violence, mass media, and contemporary alienation". He went on to win the Cannes Film Festival's Grand Prix for The Piano Teacher (2001) as well as its Palme d'Or twice, for The White Ribbon (2009) and Amour (2012), the latter of which received five Academy Award nominations and won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. He also directed Funny Games (1997) and its 2007 remake, Code Unknown (2000), Time of the Wolf (2003), Caché (2005), and Happy End (2017).

Haneke is the son of German actor and director Fritz Haneke [de] and Austrian actress Beatrix von Degenschild [de]. His stepfather, the composer Alexander Steinbrecher [de], later married the mother of actor Christoph Waltz. Haneke was raised in the city of Wiener Neustadt, Austria.

Haneke showed a strong interest in literature and music, but as an adolescent developed a "downright contempt for any form of school". During this period of his life, he has later described himself as a "rebel". He had ambitions of becoming an actor in his youth, later abandoning these plans after failing an entrance examination at the Max Reinhardt Seminar in Vienna. He later attended the University of Vienna to study philosophy, psychology and drama. Not a committed student, he would spend most of his time attending local movie theatres. After leaving university, he began working odd jobs, before working as an editor and dramaturge at the southwestern German television station Südwestfunk from 1967 to 1970, a time during which he also worked as a film critic. He made his debut as a television director in 1974.

Haneke started his career directing numerous television projects. He made his debut as a writer and director with the 1974 television movie After Liverpool starring Hildegard Schmahl [de] and Dieter Kirchlechner [de]. The project originally started as a radio play. He then directed two more television films, Three Paths to the Lake (1976), about a war photo journalist who faces a moral crisis when she is forced to examine the implications of her work, and another telefilm Sperrmüll (1976). In 1979 he directed two episodes of Lemminge followed by Variation – oder Daß es Utopien gibt, weiß ich selber! (1983). In 1986 he directed Fraulein: A German Melodrama which was described as Haneke's answer to Fassbinder's The Marriage of Maria Braun. Haneke wanted to make a film about German history that doesn't drown in self-pity and yet still attracts the public". A few years later he would make the experimental tele-documentary film Nachruf für einen Mörder about a young Austrian who provoked a hideous bloodbath in Vienna.

Haneke's feature film debut was 1989's The Seventh Continent, which served to trace out the violent and bold style that would bloom in later years. The film chronicles the last years of an Austrian family played by Birgit Doll and Dieter Berner. Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian described the film as a "masterpiece". Despite being shortlisted for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film it wasn't nominated. Three years later he directed the controversial psychological horror film Benny's Video (1992). The film premiered at the 1992 Cannes Film Festival to positive reviews. It later won the FIPRESCI Award at the European Film Awards. The film showed at the New York Film Festival where Stephen Holden of The New York Times praised the performances and Haneke writing, "The film makes strong, if heavy-handed, points about the confusing effects of television violence". His third film in the trilogy is entitled, 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance (1994), Manohla Dargis's The New York Times called it an "icy-cool study of violence both mediated and horribly real", adding "For Mr. Haneke, the point seems less that evil is commonplace than that we don't engage with it as thinking, actively moral beings. We slurp our soup while Sarajevo burns on the boob tube."

In 1997 he directed the television film The Castle (1997). The project is based on the Franz Kafka's novel of the same name. The film starred Ulrich Mühe and Susanne Lothar. It premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival. Also that year he directed the feature film Funny Games (1997). The plot involves two young men who hold a family hostage and torture them with sadistic games in their vacation home. The film premiered at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival. David Rooney of Variety wrote about his continuation of the examination of violence writing, "Haneke is clearly more interested in the implications of violence than the acts themselves, and the psychological wallop they pack is strengthened by having most of the physical and emotional carnage played off-camera".

He directed the French film Code Unknown (2000) starring Juliette Binoche. The film revolves around separate storylines which weave and intersect with each other. The film is inspired by the life of the French novelist and war reporter Olivier Weber. The film screened at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival. The New York Times praised Haneke "as a skillful, minutely observant filmmaker who trusts his audience to be able to put two and two together" but adds "Unfortunately, he's often too cryptic, which leaves viewers still trying to make connections when they should already be reacting to the moral lessons implied by them." Haneke has directed a number of stage productions in German, which include works by Strindberg, Goethe, and Heinrich von Kleist in Berlin, Munich and Vienna.