Wolfgang Becker, one of the most important directors and producers in German cinema, is dead.
Wolfgang Becker is dead. The producer, actor and director died “surprisingly” on Thursday (December 12) after a serious illness. This is reported by the production company “X Films” with reference to the Beckers family. He was 70 years old.
“Goodbye, Wolfgang! You unique friend and companion. We will miss your love, strength and creativity forever,” say Stefan Arndt, Dani Levy and Tom Tykwer. Filmmakers with whom Becker worked.
Wolfgang Becker’s family, wife Susanne and daughter Rike, ask that their privacy be respected.
His debut was “Butterflies” in 1987.
Wolfgang Becker studied, among other things, at the German Film and Television Academy Berlin (dffb); his debut was “Butterflies” in 1987. With his adaptation of Ian McEwan’s short story, he won, among other things, the Student Academy Award in Hollywood and the Golden Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival.
Then in 1994 the founding of “X Films” and successes like “Life is a construction site” and especially “Goodbye, Lenin” with Daniel Brühl, an important post-reunification film from 2003, as funny and cool as Tom Tykwer’s “Lola Run”, and the most successful German film of the year with over six million visitors.
Shortly before his death, Wolfgang Becker was able to finish filming “The Hero from Friedrichstraße Station”.
In an interview about his film “Me and Kaminski”, Becker spoke to ROLLING STONE in 2015 about the difficulty of making good films: “The middle range is problematic, anything between 7 and 10 million is difficult to finance. But you simply can’t compete internationally with a budget like that. For example, a historical film needs a certain budget in order to be able to credibly create the past time, see “Everyone dies for themselves” by Fallada, currently produced in-house. The film could not be financed in Germany alone; this was only possible with various European co-producers. But then you have to shoot in English. This wonderful German author is now being made in English because they can’t get the money together in Germany.
And about special effects and costs:
“It may be strange to say this, but I think the only way to finance films faster is to produce them much cheaper. But for this you have to have the right stories that can be made with a reduced number of actors and locations and a significantly shortened shooting time. Stars are then no longer possible, no production values, no VFX. For technically opulent star cinema, as audiences are used to from mainstream films, a much larger budget is required than the usual in Germany. Over time, extremely expensive technical means and options will certainly become cheaper and perhaps at some point the actors will all be playing in green suits in front of green, then we can also save on equipment and costumes. Maybe the self-illuminating actor will be invented, then you won’t need so much light anymore. Or they’re all 3D scanned and just animated on the computer.”