Life and career

Haneke was born in Munich, Germany, the son of the German actor and director Fritz Haneke and the Austrian actress Beatrix von Degenschild. His stepfather, the composer Alexander Steinbrecher (de), had later married the mother of actor Christoph Waltz. Haneke was raised in the city of Wiener Neustadt, Austria, and later attended the University of Vienna to study philosophy, psychology and drama after failing to achieve success in his early attempts in acting and music. After graduating, he became a film critic and from 1967 to 1970 he worked as editor and dramaturg at the southwestern German television station Südwestfunk. He made his debut as a television director in 1974.

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. Three years later, the controversial Benny's Video put Haneke's name on the map. Haneke achieved great success in 2001 with the critically successful French film The Piano Teacher. It won the prestigious Grand Prize at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival and also won its stars, Benoît Magimel and Isabelle Huppert, the Best Actor and Actress awards. He has worked with Juliette Binoche (Code Unknown in 2000 and Caché in 2005), after she expressed interest in working with him. Haneke frequently worked with real-life couple Ulrich Mühe and Susanne Lothar - thrice each.

His film, The White Ribbon, premiered at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival. The film is set in 1913 and deals with strange incidents in a small town in Northern Germany, depicting an authoritarian, fascist-like atmosphere, where children are subjected to rigid rules and suffer harsh punishments, and where strange deaths occur. The Cannes Jury presided by Isabelle Huppert and including Asia Argento, Hanif Kureishi and Robin Wright Penn awarded Haneke's film the Palme d'Or for the best feature film. In 2012, his film Amour also won the Palme d'Or at Cannes. So Haneke joined just 7 other filmmakers to have won the prestigious award twice: Francis Ford Coppola, Shōhei Imamura, the Dardenne brothers, Alf Sjöberg, Bille August and Emir Kusturica.

Haneke says that films should offer viewers more space for imagination and self-reflection. Films that have too much detail and moral clarity, Haneke says, are used for mindless consumption by their viewers. It is often difficult for people to ascertain Haneke's philosophy and the exact messages he wishes to illustrate in his works.

His 2012 film Amour won the Best Foreign Language Oscar and was nominated for the Best Picture Oscar at the 85th Academy Awards. In 2013 he was the subject of the documentary film Michael H - Profession: Director.

Stage work

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. In 2006 he gave his debut as an opera director, staging Mozart's Don Giovanni for the Opéra National de Paris at Palais Garnier when the theater's general manager was Gerard Mortier. In 2012, he was to direct Così fan tutte for the New York City Opera. This production had originally been commissioned by Jürgen Flimm for the Salzburg Festival 2009, but Haneke had to resign due to an illness preventing him from preparing the work. Haneke realized this production at Madrid's Teatro Real in 2013.

Quotes

"My films are intended as polemical statements against the American 'barrel down' cinema and its dis-empowerment of the spectator. They are an appeal for a cinema of insistent questions instead of false (because too quick) answers, for clarifying distance in place of violating closeness, for provocation and dialogue instead of consumption and consensus."

—From "Film as catharsis".

"Pornography, it seems to me, is no different from war films or propaganda films in that it tries to make the visceral, horrific, or transgressive elements of life consumable. Propaganda is far more pornographic than a home video of two people fucking."

"Film is 24 lies per second at the service of truth, or at the service of the attempt to find the truth."

"My favourite film-maker of the decade is Abbas Kiarostami. He achieves a simplicity that's so difficult to attain."

"I do think that our perception of reality is fragmentary, and in 20th-century literature, it's totally normal to not describe reality as something whole and completely transportable and explicable. That's been accepted in novels. But genre films always pretend that reality is transportable, which means that it is explicable."

"Consider the pigeon just a pigeon...There are lots of pigeons in Paris."

—On the meaning of pigeons in his movies

Filmography

Feature films

Year	Title	Notes
1989	The Seventh Continent	Locarno International Film Festival—Bronze Leopard Ghent International Film Festival—Best Application of Music and Sound in Film
1992	Benny's Video	European Film Academy Critics Award
1994	71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance
1997	Funny Games	Nominated—Cannes Film Festival—Palme d'Or
2000	Code Unknown	Nominated—Cannes Film Festival—Palme d'Or
2001	The Piano Teacher	Cannes Film Festival—Grand Prix Nominated—European Film Award for Best Director Nominated—European Film Award for Best Screenwriter
2003	Time of the Wolf	Selected for the Cannes Film Festival
2005	Caché	Cannes Film Festival—Prix de la mise en scène Chicago Film Critics Award for Best Foreign Language Film European Film Award for Best Film European Film Award for Best Director European Film Academy Critics Award Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Foreign Language Film San Francisco Film Critics Award for Best Foreign Film Nominated—Broadcast Film Critics Association Award for Best Foreign Language Film Nominated—Cannes Film Festival—Palme d'Or Nominated—César Award for Best Director Nominated—César Award for Best Writing Nominated—London Film Critics Circle Award for Foreign Language Film of the Year Nominated—Independent Spirit Award for Best Foreign Film
2007	Funny Games
2009	The White Ribbon	Cannes Film Festival—Palme d'Or Chicago Film Critics Award for Best Foreign Language Film European Film Award for Best Film European Film Award for Best Director European Film Award for Best Screenwriter German Film Award for Best Feature Film German Film Award for Best Direction German Film Award for Best Screenplay German Film Award for Best Cinematography Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film Nominated—Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film Nominated—BAFTA Award for Best Film not in the English Language Nominated—Broadcast Film Critics Association Award for Best Foreign Language Film Nominated—César Award for Best Foreign Film Nominated—London Film Critics Circle Award for Film of the Year Nominated—London Film Critics Circle Award for Director of the Year Nominated—London Film Critics Circle Award for Screenwriter of the Year Nominated—Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Film Nominated—Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Director Nominated—Washington D.C. Area Film Critics Association Award for Best Foreign Language Film
2012	Amour	Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film Alliance of Women Film Journalists Award for Best Non-English Language Film BAFTA Award for Best Film not in the English Language Boston Society of Film Critics Award for Best Foreign Film Broadcast Film Critics Association Award for Best Foreign Language Film Cannes Film Festival—Palme d'Or César Award for Best Film César Award for Best Director César Award for Best Writing Chicago Film Critics Award for Best Foreign Language Film Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Award for Best Foreign Language Film Durban International Film Festival Award for Best Feature Film European Film Award for Best Film European Film Award for Best Director Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film FIPRESCI Award for Grand Prix Independent Spirit Award for Best Foreign Film London Film Critics Circle Award for Film of the Year London Film Critics Circle Award for Screenwriter of the Year Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Film National Board of Review Award for Best Foreign Language Film National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Film National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Director New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Foreign Language Film New York Film Critics Online Award for Best Foreign Film San Francisco Film Critics Award for Best Foreign Film Washington D.C. Area Film Critics Association Award for Best Foreign Language Film Nominated—Academy Award for Best Picture Nominated—Academy Award for Best Director Nominated—Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay Nominated—Alliance of Women Film Journalists Award for Best Original Screenplay Nominated—BAFTA Award for Best Direction Nominated—BAFTA Award for Best Original Screenplay Nominated—British Independent Film Award for Best International Independent Film Nominated—European Film Award for Best Screenwriter Nominated—Houston Film Critics Award for Best Foreign Language Film Nominated—London Film Critics Circle Award for Foreign Language Film of the Year Nominated—London Film Critics Circle Award for Director of the Year Nominated—Online Film Critics Society Award for Best Film Not in the English Language Nominated—San Diego Film Critics Society Award for Best Foreign Language Film Nominated—Satellite Award for Best Foreign Language Film Nominated—Vancouver Film Critics Circle Award for Best Non-English Language Feature

TV films

• ...Und was kommt danach? (1974) (After Liverpool)
• Drei Wege zum See (1976) (Three Paths to the Lake)
• Sperrmüll (1976) (Household Rubbish)
• Lemminge, Teil 1: Arkadien (1979) (Lemmings, Part 1: Arcadia)
• Lemminge, Teil 2: Verletzungen (1979) (Lemmings, Part 2: Injuries)
• Variation (1983)
• Wer war Edgar Allan? (1984) (Who Was Edgar Allan?)
• Fräulein (1985) (Miss)
• Nachruf für einen Mörder (1991) (Obituary for a Murderer)
• Die Rebellion (1992) (The Rebellion)
• Das Schloß (1997) (The Castle)

Short films

• Lumière and Company (1995) (segment "Michael Haneke/Vienne")

Bibliography

• Catherine Wheatley: Michael Haneke's Cinema: The Ethic of the Image, New York: Berghahn Books, 2009, ISBN 1-84545-722-6 review
• Michael Haneke. Special Issue of Modern Austrian Literature. 43.2, 2010.
• Alexander D. Ornella / Stefanie Knauss (ed.): Fascinatingly Disturbing. Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Michael Haneke's Cinema, Eugene, Pickwick, 2010, ISBN 978-1-606-08624-7.

[ Source: Wikipedia ]