Biography
Christian Weisenborn was born in Berlin in 1947. The son of author and WWII resistance fighter Günther Weisenborn (1902-1969) started out as an assistant director at theatres in Flensburg and Nuremberg. In 1970, he enrolled at the Hochschule für Film und Fernsehen (HFF) in Munich. Graduating in 1974, he founded his production company Nanuk-Filmproduktion, which specialized in documentary feature films. Together with Erwin Keusch, Weisenborn made his first feature release "Was ich bin, sind meine Filme" (1976-78), a portrait of filmmaker Werner Herzog.
Predominately working for television, Weisenborn helmed numerous features and documentaries. The long-term documentary "Der Rasen ihrer Träume" (1976-1980) chronicles the emergence of young players of Germany's national soccer team, "Zu Besuch bei Rolf Zehetbauer" (1979) portrays the famous set designer while "Vom Ende der Zeit" (1983) accompanies two families during an exercise stay in an atomic bomb shelter. Also producing TV programs for children, Weisenborn made the shows "Da schau her!" (1981-86), which explained unusual professions, and "Geschichten von anderswo" (1988-92), which portrays the everyday life of children in foreign countries. Weisenborn's large body of work includes the documentary short "Mein Vater, mein Land" (1991) about a Huli warrior from Papua New Guinea who teaches his son survival skills, "Rumba, Rum und die Schwierigkeit zu leben" (1993), a portrait of a Cuban dancer, and "Die unsichtbaren Mörder" (1997, TV), a feature about the deadly landmines left from the civil war in Cambodia.
Between 2000 and 2009, he also directed several episodes of the TV documentary series "Legenden", in which he portrayed prominent figures like Niki Lauda, Muhammad Ali and Peter Frankenfeld. In addition to his work as a filmmaker, Weisenborn regularly taught in classes at the HFF and in workshops in Singapore, Egypt and Bangladesh.
Weisenborn presented the feature documentary "Was ich bin sind meine Filme - Teil 2 - Nach 30 Jahren", a continuation of his portrait of Werner Herzog, at the 2010 Munich Film Festival. He went on to work on several TV projects, including the lauded documentary "Verräterkinder" (2014), which addresses the situation of daughters and sons of German WWII resistance fighters – a very personal subject for Weisenborn due to his own biography.
The latter became the focus of "Die guten Feinde" ("Good Enemies - My Father, The Red Orchestra and me", 2015-2017), in which Weisenborn chronicles the story of his father, who narrowly escaped being executed by the Nazis for being part of the resistance, and who later tried for years to bring the Nazi judge Manfred Roeder to court. The film premiered at the 2017 DOKfest in Munich and was released theatrically in July 2017.