{"id":653347,"date":"2025-02-13T08:45:17","date_gmt":"2025-02-13T05:45:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/berlin-legend-profile-of-german-director-tom-tykwer\/"},"modified":"2025-02-13T08:45:17","modified_gmt":"2025-02-13T05:45:17","slug":"berlin-legend-profile-of-german-director-tom-tykwer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/berlin-legend-profile-of-german-director-tom-tykwer\/","title":{"rendered":"#Berlin Legend Profile of German Director Tom Tykwer"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\n\tWhat Martin Scorsese is for New York; what Paul Thomas Anderson is for Los Angeles; Yasujiro Ozu is for Tokyo and Federico Fellini is for Rome, so Tom Tykwer is for Berlin.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tTykwer has only made three films set in the German capital \u2014 his 1998 breakout\u00a0Run Lola Run<\/em>, the mid-career highlight\u00a03<\/em>\u00a0(2010) and now\u00a0The Light<\/em>, the opening film of the 75th Berlin International Film Festival \u2014 but no other director so exemplifies the city, in all its messy glory and contradictions.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019ve spent nearly 40 years in Berlin, and everything I need is here,\u201d says Tykwer from his apartment in Prenzlauer Berg. \u201cI have the people I love, the cinemas I need, and the city\u2019s strange aesthetic \u2014 these beautiful districts next to catastrophically ugly architecture. It\u2019s what delights and infuriates and inspires me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Light<\/em>\u00a0is also Tykwer\u2019s third Berlinale opening-night film, following\u00a0Heaven<\/em>\u00a0(2002) and\u00a0The International<\/em>\u00a0(2009) and he\u2019s been a regular at the festival since 1992, when his short\u00a0Epilog<\/em>\u00a0screened in Panorama. He co-wrote the screenplay for Wolfgang Becker\u2019s Berlin-set film\u00a0Life Is All You Get<\/em>, a Berlinale competition entry in 1996; presented the anthology films\u00a0Germany 09: 13 Short Films About the State of The Nation<\/em>\u00a0(2009) and\u00a0Rosakinder<\/em>\u00a0(2013) at the Berlinale; and was jury president in 2018.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis is my third time opening the film festival, and it\u2019s with a film that couldn\u2019t be more Berlin,\u201d says Tykwer. \u201cSince\u00a0Run Lola Run<\/em>\u00a0I haven\u2019t made a film as strongly anchored in this city as this one. It shows Berlin in its entirety \u2014 it shows the people who inhabit this city, those constantly on the move, in the subway, on their bikes, in the taxis, arguing on the streets. This is my city, this is my home. And\u00a0The Light<\/em>\u00a0is what my Berlin feels\u00a0like.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>

\n

\t\t\t\t\tLars Eidinger in \u2018The Light\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tLars Eidinger in DAS LICHT \/ Foto: Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Batier, X Filme Creative Pool<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tTykwer is what locals call a \u201cWahlberliner,\u201d a \u201cBerliner by choice.\u201d Like half the city\u2019s population, Tykwer\u2019s an immigrant. Born in West Germany, in the \u201crust belt\u201d city of Wuppertal \u2014 the setting for his 2000 thriller\u00a0The Princess and the Warrior<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 as a child he remembers accompanying his father, a garment merchant, on his business trip<\/a>s to the big city.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis was when West Berlin was still an island [in communist East Germany],\u201d Tykwer recalls. \u201cMy father specialized in women\u2019s fashion for the over-50s. He\u2019d drive to department stores to sell them. He always had a rack of clothes in the back and I\u2019d sit between these plastic-wrapp<\/a>ed clothes, stinking of chemicals, with my father up front, chain-smoking unfiltered Camel cigarettes. I\u2019d always puke.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut it was worth it, to travel through the corridor of East Germany \u2014 past the barbed-wire fences and watchtowers, behind the Iron Curtain \u2014 to reach Berlin.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe city was the biggest, most exciting, scary and spectacular thing I could image. And the movies<\/a>! There were 120 cinemas showing 800 films a week. You could see anything. People went to the cinema at 4 in the morning because nothing opened in Berlin before noon in those days.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOn one trip, in 1978, when he was 13, Tykwer sneaked out of his dad\u2019s hotel room to catch a midnight screening of John Carpenter\u2019s\u00a0Halloween<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI loved John Carpenter \u2014\u00a0Dark Star<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Assault on Precinct 13<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 but I was 13 and the film was rated 18 or something, so it wasn\u2019t that easy to get in,\u201d he recalls. \u201cBut I knew in Berlin nobody would care, the guy at the register, smoking, who just waves you through. So I snuck out when my father was sleeping and watched\u00a0Halloween<\/em>\u00a0for the first time. It changed my life. It was an incredible film, of course \u2014 pure filmmaking, sometimes when I\u2019m stuck creatively, I go back and watch\u00a0Halloween<\/em>\u00a0for inspiration \u2014 but seeing it in secret made it twice as good. The theater was three-quarters full. There were 250 people who went out, at midnight on a Tuesday, to watch a horror movie. I thought: \u2018I have to live here.\u2019 I don\u2019t remember this but the next day, according to my father, I told him: \u2018This is where I want to be buried.\u2019\u202f\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>

\n

\t\t\t\t\tTom Tykwer<\/span><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tJoachim-Gern<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tIn the \u201980s, still a teenager, Tykwer would come to city for the Berlinale, an annual two-week crash course in international cinema.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019d tell my parents I was staying with an aunt of mine, but that was a lie. I\u2019d just watch films all day. Back then, you could get an all-access pass and watch all the films in Competition, Forum, whatever. Screenings went until 3\u202fa.m. and started again at 8\u202fa.m. I\u2019d go to Schwarzes Caf\u00e9 in Kantstrasse, which is still there, and was open 24 hours. I\u2019d order a cocoa and sit in the corner for four hours and sleep. Then wake up and watch more movies: Andrei Tarkovsky, Peter Greenaway. My record was 11 films in one day.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTykwer was one of a new generation of film geek obsessives, autodidacts who gorged themselves on midnight screenings, VHS tapes and repertory theaters, whose movies would mash up the tropes and obsessions of cinema history with the fresh aesthetics of video game<\/a>s and music videos. Half a world away in Chicago, Lana Wachowski and sister Lilly were on a similar path, one that would eventually bring them together with Tykwer in Berlin.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBut that was still in the distant future. It was the late \u201980s when Tykwer, after being rejected from every good film school in Europe, settled in West Berlin. He got work as a projectionist, then as a programmer, at the legendary Moviemento theater \u2014 founded 1907 \u2014 a hangout for Berlin\u2019s cinema freak community. Together with three of them \u2014 producer Stefan Arndt and directors Dani Levy and Becker \u2014 Tykwer, in 1994, founded his own production company, X-Filme Creative Pool. He\u2019d made his feature debut a year earlier with\u00a0The Deadly Maria<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 a Hitchcockian psychodrama about an oppressed housewife who murders her husband and father \u2014 but it was at X-Filme that Tykwer came into his own. His cerebral Alpine thriller\u00a0Winter Sleepers<\/em>\u00a0(1997) attracted interest on the international festival scene, and his follow-up \u2014 a cheap crime drama about a girl, a gun, 20 minutes and DM 100,000 \u2014 would conquer the world.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>

\n

\t\t\t\t\t(from left): Tom-Tykwer with the co-founders of X-Filme: Dani Levy, Wolfgang Becker and Stefan Ardnt<\/span><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tX-Filme Creative Pool<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tRun Lola Run<\/em>\u00a0is an 80-minute, nonstop kinetic joy ride of a movie fueled by Tykwer\u2019s exhaustive knowledge of cinema history, gleaned from all those hours in the smoky theaters of Berlin. The plot \u2014 Lola has 20 minutes to find that DM 100,000 to save her boyfriend\u2019s life \u2014 is pure genre pulp. The film\u2019s core theme, that random events shape our fate and everything could have been different, is cribbed from Krzysztof Kieslowski\u2019s\u00a0Blind Chance<\/em>\u00a0(1987). The idea of filming a figure from the side \u2014 tirelessly running, running and running \u2014 was inspired by Eadweard Muybridge\u2019s pre-cinema moving pictures, those photographic studies of horses and humans, where activity was broken down into a series of stills for examination. The style of\u00a0Run Lola Run<\/em>, however, its combination of music video, animation and computer game aesthetics with classic cinema tropes and setups \u2014 including the old silent film gag of workers carrying a sheet of glass across the street \u2014 is all Tom Tykwer.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tRun Lola Run<\/em>\u00a0premiered in Venice but every frame, every one of the beats on its techno-soundtrack (composed by Tykwer together with Johnny Klimek and Reinhold Heil) screams Berlin. Franka Potente as Lola, flame-haired and relentless, racing across the city in her clunky Doc Martens, was instantly iconic. Her name may have been snatched from German cinema history \u2014 Lola Lola was Marlene Dietrich\u2019s character in\u00a0The Blue Angel<\/em>\u00a0(1930), and it\u2019s Barbara Sukowa\u2019s moniker as the titular hoofer in Rainer Werner Fassbinder\u2019s classic from 1981 \u2014 but this Lola came straight from the streets of the reunited capital.<\/p>\n

\n\tWith\u00a0Run Lola Run<\/em>, Tykwer captured the feel of Berlin in the late \u201990s. It\u2019s techno optimism \u2014 symbolized by the gleaming glass and steel futurism of Potsdamer Platz, a neighborhood erected on the no-man\u2019s land where the Berlin Wall used to stand \u2014 clashing with the grime and grit of a bankrupt city (the motto back then was: \u201cBerlin: poor, but sexy\u201d) and still struggling under the weight of a dark and inescapable\u00a0history.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>

\n

\t\t\t\t\t\u2018Run Lola Run\u2019 <\/span><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Sony Pictures Classics<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tThe film was a crossover hit (it grossed $7.6\u202fmillion for Sony Pictures Classics in the U.S.) and got Tykwer noticed in Hollywood. Bigger productions, with bigger stars, bigger budgets \u2014 and in English \u2014 followed.\u00a0Heaven<\/em>\u00a0(2002) starring Cate Blanchett and Giovanni Ribisi,\u00a0Perfume: The Story of a Murderer<\/em>\u00a0(2006) with Dustin Hoffman, Alan Rickman and a then-unknown Ben Whishaw.\u00a0The International<\/em>\u00a0(2009) with Clive Owen and Naomi Watts. Tom Hanks starrer\u00a0A Hologram for a King<\/em>\u00a0(2016). The Wachowskis got in contact, starting a lifelong friendship and creative collaboration that would see the trio co-direct sci-fi fantasy epic\u00a0Cloud Atlas<\/em>\u00a0(2012) and Tykwer come on board to helm episodes of the Wachowskis\u2019 Netflix series\u00a0Sense8<\/em>\u00a0and compose the music (with Klimek) for Lilly Wachowski\u2019s\u00a0The Matrix Resurrections<\/em>\u00a0(2021).\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThrough it all, Tykwer stayed in Prenzlauer Berg and let Hollywood come to him. The future worlds of\u00a0Cloud Atlas<\/em>\u00a0were built at Studio Babelsberg, as was the life-sized replica of New York\u2019s Guggenheim Museum, site of the epic shootout in\u00a0The International<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen he finally did return to German-language features, in his threesome dramedy\u00a03<\/em>\u00a0(2010), it was to go full Berlin. In place of\u00a0Run Lola Run<\/em>\u2019s 20-something punks we have Hanna (Sophie Rois) and Simon (Sebastian Schipper), 40-something culture workers (she\u2019s an arts journalist, he\u2019s an engineer for large-scale installation pieces) in a long-term relationship who separately embark on an affair with the same man. The city in\u00a03<\/em>\u00a0has scrubbed off the dirt and exchanged Lola\u2019s video game aesthetic for something colder and more clinical. Discussions of love and fate have given way to debates about sexual identity and genetic determinism. Berlin has moved from the cutting edge of cool to become a cultural capital, part of the establishment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIn between\u00a03<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0The Light<\/em>, Tykwer has continued to obsess over his adopted home. He re-created the city, in all its Weimar-era glory and shame, for\u00a0Babylon Berlin<\/em>, the television series he co-wrote and co-directed with Henk Handloegten and Achim von Borries. Launched in 2017,\u00a0Babylon Berlin<\/em>\u00a0is currently shooting its fifth and final season.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe final season focuses on the collapse of the Weimar Republic; it\u2019s set entirely in the crucial five weeks between Hitler\u2019s being appointed chancellor in January 1933 and the March elections, when the Nazis seized complete power, the stormtroopers became the police and concentration camps were opened,\u201d says Tykwer. \u201cThere\u2019s this clich\u00e9 that Germans couldn\u2019t wait to become Nazis. The reality was the society was torn apart, you had hundreds of thousands of people taking to the streets every day before Hitler was elected.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter spending a decade digging through \u201cthe upheaval and crisis of my grandparents\u2019 generation\u201d with\u00a0Babylon<\/em>, Tykwer says he felt a need to return to present-day Berlin and to a story much closer to home.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Light<\/em>\u00a0is a portrait of \u201ctypically dysfunctional\u201d middle-class Berlin family, the Engels \u2014 parents Milena and Tim (Nicolette Krebitz, Lars Eidinger), 17-year-old twins Frieda and Jon (Elke Biesendorfer, Julius Gause), and 8-year-old Dio (Elyas Eldridge) \u2014 each going through their own separate crises. Their life is disrupted, and given new meaning, when a new housekeeper, the Syrian immigrant Farrah (Tala Al-Deen), enters their lives.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>

\n

\t\t\t\t\t(from left): Nicolette Krebitz, Elyas Eldridge, Julius Gause, Elke Biesendorfer, Lars Eidinger in \u2018The Light\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\u00a9 Frederic Batier \/ X Verleih<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\t\u201cIt a very simple construct, is a bit like Pasolini\u2019s\u00a0Teorema<\/em>\u00a0or\u00a0Mrs. Doubtfire<\/em>, it\u2019s kind of absurd and funny,\u201d says Tykwer, \u201cbut it also explores issues that I think are important and serious for my generation and for the younger generation. Young people come up to me and say: \u2018What did you do in the last 20 years?\u2019 And the truth is, me, my generation, we actually rested on the laurels \u2014 we thought we had successfully established a liberal, open-minded, democratic society. We got to the right place, and we could take it easy. We completely ignored that by unleashing digitalization around the turn of the millennium, we completely disrupted an economic system and the society connected to it. We weren\u2019t paying attention. We thought we were leaving an amazing kit of tools for the next generation. We left a scrap heap.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tWahlberliner Tom Tykwer isn\u2019t expecting any home field advantage at\u00a0The Light<\/em>\u2019s world premiere. The city\u2019s \u201cself-appointed cinema experts,\u201d he says, are sure to have their knives out and ready, if his latest take on Berlin is not to their\u00a0liking.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThey\u2019ll be the first to say: \u2018That\u2019s not what my Berlin looks like, that\u2019s not how my Berlin feels,\u2019\u202f\u201d he says. \u201cAnd the film certainly isn\u2019t perfect, but then neither is this city. Berlin is an eternal construction site, never finished, it\u2019s always reinventing itself. That unsettles some people, but I find it inspiring. This beautiful catastrophe, this nervous tension \u2014 it\u2019s exactly what I want in my films: unpredictability, chaos and beauty.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

If you liked the article, do not forget to share it with your friends. Follow us on\u00a0Google News<\/a><\/span>\u00a0too, click on the star and choose us from your favorites.<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n

If you want to read more Like this articles, you can visit our Social Media category.<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What Martin Scorsese is for New York; what Paul Thomas Anderson is for Los Angeles; Yasujiro Ozu is for Tokyo and Federico Fellini is for Rome, so Tom Tykwer is for Berlin.\u00a0 Tykwer has only made three films set in the German capital \u2014 his 1998 breakout\u00a0Run Lola Run, the mid-career highlight\u00a03\u00a0(2010) and now\u00a0The Light,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":653348,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/569-BCA_8486.jpg?w=1440&h=810&crop=1","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[153271,153739,154342,124783,146680,121988],"class_list":["post-653347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-social-mediaa","tag-berlin-2025","tag-berlin-film-festival-2025","tag-das-licht","tag-international","tag-the-light","tag-tom-tykwer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=653347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653347\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/653348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=653347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=653347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=653347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}