Tom Tykwer

Tom Tykwer
Tom Tykwer, Berlinale, 2009
Born	(1965-05-23) 23 May 1965 (age 51) Wuppertal, West Germany
Occupation	Film director, screenwriter, film composer
Years active	1986–present
Spouse(s)	Marie Steinmann (m. 2009)

Tom Tykwer (German: [ˈtɪkvɐ]; born 23 May 1965) is a German film director, producer, screenwriter, and composer. He is best known internationally for directing the thrillers Run Lola Run (1998), Heaven (2002), and Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006), and the action thriller The International (2009). He collaborated with The Wachowskis as co-director in the science fiction film Cloud Atlas (2012) and the Netflix series Sense8 (2015–present).

Tykwer was born in Wuppertal, West Germany. Fascinated by film from an early age, he started making amateur Super 8 films at the age of eleven. He later helped out at a local arthouse cinema in order to see more films, including those for which he was too young to buy tickets. After graduating from high school, he unsuccessfully applied to numerous film schools around Europe; he moved to Berlin where he worked as a projectionist. In 1987, at the age of 22, he became the programmer of the Moviemento cinema and became known to German directors as a film buff.

In Berlin, Tykwer met and befriended the filmmaker Rosa von Praunheim, who urged him to create stories from his own experience. He suggested, for example, that Tykwer record arguments with his girlfriend, and turn them into a short film. Because (1990) was screened at the Hof Film Festival and well received by the audience, which inspired Tykwer to continue pursuing filmmaking. He made a second short film, "Epilog" (1992), for which he took on personal financial debt, but he also gained valuable technical filmmaking experience. Tykwer wrote the screenplay for—and directed—his first feature film, the psychological thriller Deadly Maria. It aired on German television and had a limited theatrical release in Germany and the international film festival circuit.