Tom Tykwer

Tom Tykwer (German: [ˈtɪkvɐ]; born 23 May 1965) is a German film director, producer, screenwriter, and composer. He is best known internationally for directing the thrillers Run Lola Run (1998), Heaven (2002), and Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006), the action thriller The International (2009), and collaborated with The Wachowskis for the science fiction film Cloud Atlas (2012) and Sense8 (2015).

Early life

Tykwer was born in Wuppertal, West Germany. Fascinated by film from an early age, he started making amateur Super 8 films at the age of eleven and later helped out at a local arthouse cinema to see more films, including those for which he was too young to buy tickets. After graduating from high school, he unsuccessfully applied to numerous film schools around Europe and moved to Berlin where he worked as a projectionist. In 1987, at the age of 22, he became the programmer of the Moviemento cinema and became known to German directors as a film buff.

Career

In Berlin, Tykwer met and befriended the filmmaker Rosa von Praunheim, who urged him to create stories from his own experience and suggested that Tykwer record arguments with his girlfriend at the time, and turn them into a short film. Because (1990) was screened at the Hof Film Festival and well received by the audience, which inspired Tykwer to continue pursuing filmmaking. He made a second short film, "Epilog" (1992), that plunged him into personal financial debt, but gained him valuable technical filmmaking experience. Tykwer wrote the screenplay for—and directed—his first feature film, the psychological thriller Deadly Maria, which aired on German television and saw a limited theatrical release in Germany and the international film festival circuit.