She may be relatively unknown in America, but Maria Schrader can excite the paparazzi in Berlin. When we cornered her at the party for the film company X in Berlin, people couldn’t stop dropping by to talk about her new film released in Germany last November, Liebesleben (Love Life), which she wrote and directed and which unspools is here at the Berlinale as part of the German Cinema section.
Filmed in Israel, Liebesleben is the story of a “forbidden love,” as Schrader puts it, and continues her with the themes of her other movies as one of Germany’s leading actresses, in such movies Aimée & Jaguar, directed by Max Faerberboeck, and Stille Nacht, a movie she co-directed with Dani Levi and also co-wrote. She’s also worked with such leading German directors as Margarethe von Trotta (Rosenstrasse) and Doris Coerrie (Bin ich schoen?) She was a member of
Berlin’s International Competition jury in 2000.
Festival screenings for Liebesleben have included the opening night screening at Rome 2007
Festival Screenings Rome 2007 (Official Selection Cinema 2007: Out of Competition), Berlin 2008 (German Cinema)Genre Drama, Literature
Category Feature Film Cinema
Year of Production 2007
Director Maria Schrader
Screenplay Maria Schrader, Laila Stieler
Director of Photography Benedict Neuenfels
Editor Antje Zynga
Music by Niki Reiser
Production Design Christian M. Goldbeck
Producer Stefan Arndt
Production Company X Filme Creative Pool/Berlin, in co-production with Transfax Film/Tel Aviv, BR/Munich, ARTE/Strasbourg
Principal Cast Netta Garti, Rade Sherbedgia, Tovah Feldshuh, Stephen Singer, Ishai Golan, Arie Moskona, Caroline Silhol, Assi Dayan, Clara Khoury
Maria Schrader was born in 1965 in Hanover and studied Acting at the renowned Max-Reinhardt-Seminar in Vienna. One of Germany’s most well-known actresses, she has worked with some of Germany’s most successful directors in such films as Aimée & Jaguar (Max Faerberboeck), Bin ich schoen? (Doris Doerrie), Emil und die Detektive (Franziska Buch), Meschugge, Vaeter, and Stille Nacht (Dani Levy), Rosenstrasse (Margarethe von Trotta), and Schneeland (Hans W. Geissendoerfer), as well as on stage in theaters in Germany and Switzerland. Together with director Dani Levy, she also co-directed Meschugge and Stille Nacht.
Love Life (Liebesleben, 2007) marks her own directing debut.