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Tom Tykwer

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Tom Tykwer

Tom Tykwer (German: [ˈtɪkvɐ]; born 23 May 1965) is a German film director, producer, screenwriter, and composer. He is best known internationally for directing the thriller films Run Lola Run (1998), Heaven (2002), Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006), and The International (2009). He collaborated with The Wachowskis as co-director for the science fiction film Cloud Atlas (2012) and the Netflix series Sense8 (2015–2018), and worked on the score for Lana Wachowski's The Matrix Resurrections (2021). Tykwer is also well known as the co-creator of the internationally acclaimed German television series Babylon Berlin (2017–).

Tykwer was born in Wuppertal, West Germany. Fascinated by film from an early age, he started making amateur Super 8 films at the age of eleven. He later helped out at a local arthouse cinema in order to see more films, including those for which he was too young to buy tickets. After graduating from high school, he applied to numerous film schools around Europe, unsuccessfully.

Tykwer moved to Berlin where he worked as a projectionist.[citation needed] In 1987, at the age of 22, he became the programmer of the Moviemento cinema and became known to German directors as a film buff.[independent source needed] In Berlin, Tykwer met and befriended the filmmaker Rosa von Praunheim, who urged him to create stories from his own experience. He suggested, for example, that Tykwer record arguments with his girlfriend, and turn them into a short film. Because (1990) was screened at the Hof International Film Festival and well received by the audience, which inspired Tykwer to continue pursuing filmmaking.

He made a second short film, Epilog (1992), for which he took on personal financial debt, but he also gained valuable technical film making experience.[according to whom?] Tykwer wrote the screenplay for, and directed, his first feature film, the psychological thriller Deadly Maria (1993). It aired on German television and had a limited theatrical release in Germany and the international film festival circuit.

In 1994, Tykwer founded the production company X Filme Creative Pool with Stefan Arndt, Wolfgang Becker, and Dani Levy.[citation needed]

Tykwer and Becker wrote the screenplay for the comedy Life Is All You Get (1997), while working on Winter Sleepers (1997), Tykwer's second feature and a much bigger and more complex production than Deadly Maria. Winter Sleepers brought Tykwer to the attention of German cineastes and film festivals, but he was struggling financially.[according to whom?]

His next feature film, Run Lola Run (1998), became the most successful German film of 1998, earned $7 mln at the US box office, and elevated Tykwer to international fame. As Lola was becoming a success worldwide, Tykwer was already at work on his next film, The Princess and the Warrior (2000), a love story about a nurse and a former soldier, which was shot in his home town of Wuppertal.

Miramax produced his next film, Heaven (2002), based on a screenplay by Polish filmmaker Krzysztof Kieślowski, which was shot in English, starred Cate Blanchett and Giovanni Ribisi, and was filmed in Turin and Tuscany.

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