A documentarian who turned to feature film directing, Robert Dornhelm won notice for his first motion picture, the English-language independent "Echo Park" (1985), which was the official US selection for the Venice, London and Deauville Film Festivals. The story of a writer (Tom Hulce) who boards in the apartment of a single mother (Susan Dey) and her son in a decaying L.A. neighborhood, "Echo Park" anticipated the rise of independent feature films in the USA. Dornhelm followed with "Cold Feet" (1989), the story of three renegades in Montana who try to become king of the hill.

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