Volker Schlondorff is one of the major directors of the New German Cinema, the group of filmmakers who, in the late 1960s and early 70s, revitalized a moribund German film culture. He studied at the Institut des Hautes Etudes Cinematographiques in Paris in the late 1950s and, between 1960 and 1964, worked as an assistant to directors including Louis Malle, Alain Resnais and Jean-Pierre Melville.

Schlondorff's first feature, "Young Torless" (1966), based on a classic novel by Robert Musil about coming of age in an elite Austrian military academy, is considered a milestone of the New German