Cast
Magdeburg

Biography

Christian Friedel, born March 9, 1979, in Magdeburg, attended drama school at Munich's Otto Falckenberg Schule from 2001 to 2004. After finishing drama school, he directly started to work at Bayerisches Staatsschauspiel before he became a cast member of Schauspiel Hannover where he stayed from 2006 to 2009. He then went to Dresdner Staatsschauspiel where he is a cast member to date. In 2005, Friedel won the Merkur promotional award in Munich for numerous strong theatre performances.

Since 1999, Friedel has appeared as an actor in several short films. In 2009, he finally made his feature film debut: In Michael Haneke's film "Das weiße Band – Eine deutsche Kindheitsgeschichte" ("The White Ribbon") that won the Golden Palm at the 2009 Cannes film festival followed by dozens of other national and international awards, he plays the role of a teacher in a northern German village in the years 1913 and 1914 where several mysterious crimes are committed.

In 2010, Christian Friedel was awarded the Erich-Ponto-Preis for his work. He then had a supporting role in the international co-production "Huhn mit Pflaumen", which premiered at the 2011 Venice Film Festival, and starred in the drama "Ende der Schonzeit". Along with his acting career, Christian Friedel also moonlights as a musician and composer: The debut album of his band "Woods of Birnam" was released in 2012.

Friedel played the male lead in Jessica Hausner's period drama "Amour fou" (2014), which premiered in the section "Un certain regard" at the Cannes Film Festival. The story about a poet who enters a romantic suicide pact with his cousin was inspired by poet Heinrich von Kleist. After a supporting role in the made-for-TV film "Die Auserwählten" (2014), Friedel was cast in the title role in Oliver Hirschbiegel's "Elser" (2014/2015), which recounts the fate of German resistance fighter Georg Elser, who tried to kill Adolf Hitler. For this role Friedel was nominated for the German Film Award and for the European Film Award.