Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke (; born 23 March 1942) is an Austrian film director and screenwriter. His work often examines social issues and depicts the feelings of estrangement experienced by individuals in modern society. Haneke has made films in French, German, and English and has worked in television and theatre, as well as cinema. He also teaches film direction at the Film Academy Vienna. Haneke is known for his political and social satire trilogy The Seventh Continent (1989), Benny's Video (1992), and 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance (1994). He has since won the Cannes Film Festival's Grand Prix for The Piano Teacher (2001) as well as its twice for The White Ribbon (2009), and Amour (2012), the later of which received five Academy Award nominations and won the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film. He is also known for directing Funny Games (1997), Code Unknown (2000), Caché (2005), and Happy End (2017). Early life and education Haneke is the son of German actor and director Fritz Haneke and Austrian actress . His stepfather, the composer , had later married the mother of actor Christoph Waltz. Haneke was raised in the city of Wiener Neustadt, Austria. Haneke showed a strong interest in literature and music, but as an adolescent developed a "downright contempt for any form of school". During this period of his life, he has later described himself as a "rebel". He had ambitions of becoming an actor in his youth, later abandoning these plans after failing an entrance examination at the Max Reinhardt Seminar in Vienna. He later attended the University of Vienna to study philosophy, psychology and drama. Not a committed student, he would spend most of his time attending local movie theatres. After leaving university, he began working odd jobs, before working as an editor and dramaturge at the southwestern German television station Südwestfunk from 1967 to 1970, a time during which he also worked as a film critic. He made his debut as a television director in 1974.