Standing at an imposing 6’8”, German-born director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck loomed over the 2007 Academy Awards when he won the Best Foreign Film Oscar for his feature debut, “The Lives of Others” (2006), a stark and frightening thriller set in the world of the infamous Stasi, East Germany’s brutal intelligence agency, during the height of the Cold War.Though born in Cologne, West Germany in 1973, von Donnersmarck journeyed often to the East to visit relatives who lived in constant fear of being spied on and interrogated by Stasi officers. Even his parents failed to escape their reach
