Cast, Director, Screenplay
Wien, Österreich

Biography

Dieter Berner was born in Vienna on 31 August 1944. He first studied Media Studies, German and Philosophy at the University of Vienna and then trained as an actor at the Max Reinhardt Seminar in Vienna and the Max Reinhardt Schule in Berlin. He then spent two years at the Vienna Volkstheater.   

In 1968 he was awarded the Karl Skraup Prize for the best young actor. In the same year, together with the actor Werner Prinz and the director Wolfgang Quetes, Berner founded the theatre group "Theater der Courage" in Vienna, which saw itself as a collective and worked according to the principles of co-determination theatre. In the following years Berner gained experience as an actor and director at the Schaubühne am Halleschen Ufer in Berlin, the Theater am Neumarkt in Zurich, the Akademietheater and the Volkstheater in Vienna.    

Dieter Berner made his television debut in 1972 with the Franz Xaver Kroetz adaptation "Wildwechsel", a production of the Theater der Courage staged for television. He then shifted his main field of activity to television and cinema. One of his best-known works is the award-winning television play Wo seine Wäsche (AT 1975), about the Kafkaesque experiences of a pair of young immigrant parents in Austrian offices.

The episodes "Der Kaiser am Lande" (1978) and "Der Deutsche Frühling" (1979) from the six-part family and village chronicle "Die Alpensaga" (AT 1976-1980) also received international awards. Berner also received very positive reviews for the four-part Workers' Saga (AT 1985-1991), set between 1945 and 1991. In both series he traced Austrian history from the perspective of the "lower" social classes.   

Between 1992 and 1996, Berner directed several episodes of the crime series "Auf eigene Gefahr", often from his own scripts. He also directed the series "Kids von Berlin" (1996-97). A cinema production was the crook comedy "Joint Venture" (1994), about a couple from Vienna who sniff out lucrative business opportunities in Prague. For the TV production "Die Verhaftung des Johann Nepomuk Nestroy" (AT 2000), set in 1848, about the Viennese satirist of the same name, Berner and Peter Turrini received the Austrian TV and Film Award Romy for best screenplay.   

Between 1983 and 2001, Berner taught at film schools in Vienna, Munich and Berlin. As an actor, however, he was only seen very occasionally. For example, in the lead role in Michael Haneke's "The Seventh Continent" ("The Seventh Continent", AT 1989) and as a singing teacher in Haneke's "Die Klavierspielerin" ("The Piano Teacher", AT/FR 2001).

In the 2000s, Berner directed several 'Tatort' episodes in Austria and Germany. From 2004 to 2010, he held a professorship for media-specific acting at the Babelsberg Film School "Konrad Wolf", where he developed a new technique of collective scene development: in collaboration with acting and screenwriting students, he directed the two feature films "Berliner Reigen" (2006, based on Arthur Schnitzler) and "Krankheit der Jugend" (2009, based on Ferdinand Bruckner), both of which screened at international festivals.  

After a long break, Berner presented the feature film "Egon Schiele: Tod und Mädchen" ("Egon Schiele: Death and the Maiden", AT/LU 2016), a highly acclaimed film portrait of the famous artist. At the 2017 Austrian Film Awards, the film was nominated for Best Director and Best Screenplay (together with his wife Hilde Berger), as well as Best Feature Film, among others. At the Romy Awards it won in the categories Best Screenplay Feature Film and Best Producer Feature Film, Noah Saavedra and Valerie Pachner won Best Young Actors, and "Egon Schiele: Tod und Mädchen" was nominated in the category Best Feature Film.

Berner's next feature film "Alma & Oskar", about the consuming relationship between the artists Alma Mahler and Oskar Kokoschka, premiered at the International Film Festival in Goa, India, in November 2022. Berner had again written the script together with Hilde Berger. The film was released in German cinemas in the summer of 2023.

Filmography

2021/2022
  • Director
  • Screenplay
2009/2010
  • Director
2006/2007
  • Director
2005/2006
  • Director
2004/2005
  • Director
  • Screenplay
2003
  • Director
1994
  • Director
1988
  • Director
1986
  • Director
  • Screenplay
1984/1985
  • Director
1981/1982
  • Cast
1981
  • Director
1981
  • Director
  • Screenplay
1979/1980
  • Director
1977
  • Director
1976
  • Director