Edward Berger
Birthdate: Mar 6, 1970
Birthplace: Wolfsburg, Lower Saxony, Germany
Edward Berger is a German-Swiss-Austrian filmmaker who won the International Oscar for All Quiet on the Western Front (2022), and who launched his German film career as director/ the drama, Gomez—Kopf oder Zahl (1998), starring Antonio Wannek. Berger co-wrote and directed his second theatrical German feature, Frau2 sucht HappyEnd (Female 2 Seeks Happy End) (2001), co-starring Ben Becker and Isabella Parkinson and produced by Tobis StudioCanal.
Berger returned to feature filmmaking after more than a decade of directing for television when he made his festival and international breakthrough as co-writer and director of the intense German drama, Jack (2014), starring young actor Ivo Pietzcker and premiering in competition at the Berlin film festival, and which was shortlisted for Germany’s shortlist for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. Berger’s fourth German feature as director/writer followed five years later with the domestic drama, All My Loving (2019), starring Lars Eidinger which premiered in the Panorama section of the Berlin Film Festival.
Edward Berger stepped aboard as director/co-writer/producer of the long-nurtured project by screenwriters Lesley Paterson and Ian Stokell to bring a fresh, $20 million-budgeted adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s classic WWI novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, to the screen, co-starring Felix Kammerer, Albrecht Schuch and Daniel Brühl, premiering at the Toronto film festival, released by Netflix and earning nine Oscar nominations (and winning four).
Berger made his English-language debut as a feature director with the UK/US-produced Vatican drama, Conclave (2024), based on Robert Harris’ novel, co-starring Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow, Sergio Castellitto, and Isabella Rossellini, and following its Telluride film festival premiere was released wide by Focus Features.
Berger was director and a producer (with Mike Goodridge and Mathew James Wilkinson) of the psychological thriller, The Ballad of a Small Player (date to be announced), based on Lawrence Osborne’s 2014 novel of the same title, and co-starring Colin Farrell, Tilda Swinton and Fala Chen, and released by Netflix.
Personal Details
Edward Berger was born and raised in the Lower Saxony city of Wolfsburg in former West Germany by his Swiss-born mother and Austrian-born father’s parents. Berger attended Hochschule für Bildende Künste Braunschweig (Braunschweig University of Art) in Braunschweig, Former West Germany, in 1990 and 1991, and then transferred to the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, from which he graduated with a degree in directing in 1994. Berger extended his academic activities as a lecturer and workshop director at Columbia University, at Universität der Künste Berlin (Berlin University of the Arts), and Filmuniversität Babelsberg Konrad Wolf (Konrad Wolf Film University of Babelsberg). Berger has lived in Berlin since 1997. Berger is married to actor/writer/director Nele Mueller-Stöfen.
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- 2022 | All Quiet on the Western FrontasDirector
All Quiet on the Western Front
All Quiet on the Western Front tells the gripping story of a young German soldier on the Western Front of World War I. Paul and his comrades experience first-hand how the initial euphoria of war turns into desperation and fear as they fight for their lives, and each other, in the trenches. The film from director Edward Berger is based on the world renowned bestseller of the same name by Erich Maria Remarque.
Some Facts About Edward Berger
Multi-citizen: Edward Berger holds passports for Germany, Switzerland and Austria, since he’s a citizen by birth of all three countries.
