**Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck** (Cologne, 1973) is a German film director and screenwriter, internationally recognized for the depth and ambition of his works.

He achieved worldwide fame with his debut feature film, *The Lives of Others* (Das Leben der Anderen, 2006), an intense drama about the Stasi which earned him the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Subsequently, he directed the Hollywood thriller *The Tourist* (2010), starring Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp, and earned another Academy Award nomination for *Never Look Away* (Werk ohne Autor, 2018), an epic based on the life of artist Gerhard Richter.

His style is characterized by formal elegance and meticulous attention to detail. His films often explore complex themes such as German history, art, individual freedom, moral questions, and the weight of the past, presenting profoundly human characters in contexts of great emotional and intellectual impact.