Marianne Lüdcke, born July 22, 1943, in Berlin, started her career as a film director after an apprenticeship at Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie Berlin (dffb) in 1973 with the workers drama "Die Wollands" (co-directed by Ingo Kratisch). The film about a welder who gets involved in the labour dispute despite suffering personal disadvantages won the award as "Best film" at the German Film Critics Association Awards.

During her early career in the film business, Lüdcke considered herself as a director in the tradition of the "Proletarian Film" and finished several films during the 1970s – often co-directed by Ingo Kratisch – that were set in working-class environments, including "Familienglück" (1975), starring Thilo Prückner as a lathe operator whose marriage gets more and more stuck in a crisis, or the TV movie "Die Tannerhütte" (1976) about a socially involved steel mill owner who fights against plans to turn his factory into a stock company.

Lüdcke's best-known film is probably the three-part TV movie "Die große Flatter". The film is set in a lower class environment: Richy Müller (in his first big role) and Jochen Schroeder play two teenagers who become delinquents in their attempt to climb the social ladder.

Besides her work as a writer and director of both ambitious TV movies and also of TV series like "Tatort" and "Peter Strohm", Lüdcke also worked as a guest lecturer at dffb.

In 1998, she finished her last film "Mein großer Freund", a blend of crime film and character study. Marianne Lüdcke died on May 31, 1999, from heart failure during a vacation in France.