Me and Kaminski

"You're famous. That's what you wanted. Being famous means having someone like me." - Sebastian Zöllner in Germany shortly before the turn of the millennium.

Sebastian Zöllner (Daniel Brühl), art journalist and master of overconfidence, plans his big coup: a tell-all book about the legendary, but almost forgotten painter Manuel Kaminski (Jesper Christensen), a pupil of Matisse and friend of Picasso who once became famous as "the blind painter." Zöllner, an unscrupulous and ambitious careerist, makes his way to the remote chalet high in the Alps where the aged artist lives withdrawn and shielded by confidants. Sebastian intrudes into Kaminski's home, life and past, unceremoniously taking him on a breakneck and insane journey to his childhood sweetheart, who has long been considered dead. On the way, he tries to elicit Kaminski's secrets with cunning and audacity.
But Sebastian soon discovers that, whether blind or not, he's in no way the old man's equal.

Wolfgang Becker was born in 1954. He studied at Berlin's Free University from 1974 until 1979 and from 1981 at the German Film and Television Academy Berlin (dffb). SCHMETTERLINGE (BUTTERFLIES) was his first own movie in 1987 and at the same time his graduation film at the German Film and Television Academy (dffb). The adaptation of a short story by Ian McEwan won amongst others the Student Academy Award in Hollywood and the Golden Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival.
Following a widely praised episode (BLUTWURSTWALZER (BLOOD SAUSAGE WALTZ)) for the crime series TATORT in 1991, he directed KINDERSPIELE (CHILD'S PLAY) in 1992. It is a tragic-comic story about a childhood in the working class, which won the award of the German Filmcritics.
Becker is a founding member of X Filme Creative Pool. The first film he directed for X Filme was DAS LEBEN IST EINE BAUSTELLE (LIFE IS ALL YOU GET). The film was first released during Berlinale Film Festival in 1997 and won three German Film Awards.
GOOD BYE, LENIN! had more than six million admissions worldwide and was the most successful German movie of the year 2003. The movie was sold to more than 60 countries and became internationally popular. GOOD BYE, LENIN! achieved numerous German and European Film awards and was nominated for the Golden Globes.
His short film BALLERO was produced for the drawing of FIFA's World Cup 2006 and was broadcasted worldwide on TV. Becker's contribution to the compilation DEUTSCHLAND 09 (GERMANY 09) called KRANKES HAUS (SICK HOUSE), allegorizes Germany as a seedy hospital.
Furthermore Wolfgang Becker held a professorship at the KHM Cologne (Academy of Media Arts) in the department of directing and he had several teaching assignments at the dffb and the Filmacademy Baden-Wuerttemberg.

SELECTED FILMOGRAPHY:
2015 ME & KAMINSKI
2003 GOOD BYE, LENIN!
1997 LIFE IS ALL YOU GET
1992 CHILD'S PLAY
1987 BUTTERFLIES