23/08/2022 - The German director, the first woman to win Venice's Golden Lion, will be an honorary guest at the 35th European Film Awards ceremony on 10 December in Reykjavik

On the occasion of this year's 35th European Film Awards and in recognition of a unique contribution to the world of film, the European Film Academy takes great pleasure in presenting the actress, director and screenwriter Margarethe von Trotta with the Lifetime Achievement Award for her outstanding body of work.

Born in Berlin, Margarethe von Trotta grew up with her mother in the German city of Düsseldorf. She started her career as an actress, in theatre and appearing in films by Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Volker Schlöndorff. She also collaborated with Schlöndorff on script and direction. Active in the fight against pornography and misogyny, she became a leading female director of European auteur cinema. Her solo debut as a director came in 1978 with The Second Awakening of Christa Klages. In 1981, her film Marianne & Julianne about the “German Sisters” Christiane and Gudrun Ensslin won the Golden Lion in Venice (which made von Trotta the first woman to ever win the award), followed by two German Film Awards and an Italian David di Donatello as well as the critics' award of both East and West Germany. Sheer Madness ran in competition in Berlin in 1983 while Rosa Luxemburg, about the German-Polish socialist, premiered in Cannes in 1986, where it won Barbara Sukowa the Best Actress Award. She returned to Cannes in 1988 with Love and Fear and in 2018 with Searching for Ingmar Bergman [+see also:
trailer
film profile]. Her 2003 drama Rosenstrasse [+see also:
trailer
film profile] won the Volpi Cup for Katja Riemann in Venice, followed by the Italian Golden Globe and another David di Donatello as well as a nomination for the European Film Awards (European Actress for Katja Riemann). Hannah Arendt [+see also:
trailer
interview: Margarethe von Trotta
film profile] (2012), a portrait of the German-Jewish academic, won two German Film Awards and got main actress Barbara Sukowa a nomination for the European Film Awards. Her latest feature, Ingeborg Bachmann – Journey into the Desert [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Margarethe von Trotta
film profile], deals with the relationship between writers Ingeborg Bachmann and Max Frisch (read news).

For her outstanding work, Margarethe von Trotta received the 2013 Honorary Dragon Award at the Göteborg Film Festival, the 2018 Espiga de Honor at the Valladolid International Film Festival, a German Honorary Film Award 2019 for her "continued outstanding individual contributions to German film over the years" and the 2020 Lifetime Achievement Award at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival. Cineuropa interviewed her last year after she received the Mikeldi Honorary Award at the 63rd Zinebi (read here).

Margarethe von Trotta will be an honorary guest at the 35th European Film Awards Ceremony on 10 December in Reykjavik, which be streamed live in our pages and on the awards' website.