Robert Thalheim – Director

Robert Thalheim, born July 2, 1974 in Berlin, graduated from high school in Indiana, USA, in 1992, and finished school in Germany in 1995. From 1997 to 1998, Thalheim worked as an assistant director at Berliner Ensemble. From 1998 on, he studied at FU Berlin but enrolled at Filmhochschule "Konrad Wolf" in Potsdam-Babelsberg in 2000 to study directing. Furthermore, Thalheim wrote a book about Andrzej Wajda (published in 2000) and is the editor of the cultural affairs magazine "Plotki". In 2003, Thalheim directed his play "Wild Boys" at Berlin"s Maxim Gorki theatre.

In 2005, Thalheim made his feature film debut as a director with "Netto", a film about a father-son relationship that was shown at various festivals and won several awards, including the "Förderpreis Langfilm" at the 2005 film festival "Max Ophuels Preis" in Saarbrucken. Thalheim"s second film "Am Ende kommen Touristen" ("And Along Come Tourists") premiered at the 2007 Cannes film festival. The film was nominated as Best Picture at the 2008 German Film Awards, while lead actor Alexander Fehling won the Förderpreis Deutscher Film for his performance.

Subsequently, Thalheim and Kolja Mensing co-wrote the play "Moschee DE" – a scenic re-enactment of the 2006 construction of the Khadija mosque in Berlin – which premiered at the Schauspiel Hannover in 2010. Robert Thalheim"s third feature film "Westwind", about East-German twin sisters who have to decide whether they want to flee to the West at the end of the 1980s, was released in August 2011.