Bernd Böhlich

The son of the painter Adolf Böhlich, Bernd Böhlich is a German filmmaker whose work has been almost entirely in television. Böhlich began his career working for East German television as an assistant director while studying filmmaking at the East German Film Academy in Potsdam-Babelsberg. His graduating short film, "Fronturlaub" (1983), played at several international festivals, allowing Böhlich to earn a name beyond the Iron Curtain from the very beginning. Before and after the German reunification, Böhlich has largely worked making television movies in a range of styles and genres, from the dark serial-killer thriller "Death Angel" (1999) to the feelgood family Christmas flick "Alles Samba" (2003). In the 2000s, Böhlich has made a number of feature films, including the dramas "Mutterseelenallein" (2005) and "Der Mond und andere Liebhaber" (2008), and the romcom "Du bist nicht allein" (2007). However, his defining work is "Landschaft mit Dornen" (1992) -- which translated as "Landscape with thorns" -- a made-for-TV movie that was started in East Germany and finished in a unified German Republic after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The film, which details a group of disenfranchised East German youths rebelling against the Communist conformity of the past generation, received the Grimme Award, German television's most prestigious prize.