Biographie
Romuald Karmakar was born in Wiesbaden on February 15, 1965. The son of a French mother and an Iranian father, he lived with his parents in Athens from 1977 to 1982 before moving with his family to Munich, where he completed high school in 1984. That same year, he purchased a Super 8 camera and began making short films, including "Eine Freundschaft in Deutschland" (1985), in which he portrayed a young Adolf Hitler. His short documentary "Coup de boule" (1987) depicts a peculiar ritual in a French army camp where recruits repeatedly bang their heads against doors and lockers. Another short documentary, "Demontage IX, Unternehmen Stahlglocke," earned the Best German Short award at the esteemed Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen.
Karmakar returned to military themes for his first feature-length documentary, "Warheads" (DE/FR 1992), which follows a German foreign legion veteran and an English mercenary during their time in areas such as French Guiana and war-torn Croatia. The film received highly positive reviews.
His major breakthrough came with his first dramatic feature, "Der Totmacher," an intimate portrayal of serial killer Fritz Haarmann, played by Götz George. The film debuted in competition at the Venice International Film Festival, where George won Best Actor. At the German Film Awards, "Der Totmacher" secured honors for Best Film, Best Actor, and Best Direction, and was nominated for Young European Film of the Year at the 1995 European Film Awards.
In 1998, Karmakar presented "Das Frankfurter Kreuz," an episodic drama set in a seedy dive bar on New Year's Eve, screened in the Panorama section of the Berlin International Film Festival. This film marked his first collaboration with actor Manfred Zapatka, whom he admired since Zapatka's role as a pimp in Sohrab Shahid Saless' "Utopia" (1983). They worked together again on "Das Himmler-Projekt" (2000), featuring Zapatka reciting Heinrich Himmler's infamous three-hour speech to 92 SS generals in 1943. The film premiered in the Forum section of the Berlin IFF, won the 3Sat Documentary Film Prize, and Karmakar and Zapatka received a special accolade at the Grimme Awards.
Although "Manila" (2000), a drama about travelers stranded at Manila airport, received mixed reviews, it earned several awards, including the Silver Leopard at Locarno International Film Festival and Best Screenplay at the Bavarian Film Awards, shared by Karmakar and co-author Bodo Kirchhoff.
After the experimental music documentary "196 BPM" (2002), Karmakar released two films at the 2004 Berlin IFF: the acclaimed documentary "Land der Vernichtung" (2004), about a Hamburg police battalion's role in the murder of 1.7 million Jews in Poland during 1942/1943, screened in the Panorama section; and the romantic drama "Die Nacht singt ihre Lieder" (2004), starring Frank Giering, Anne Ratte-Polle, Manfred Zapatka, and Marthe Keller, which competed officially but received a lukewarm critical response.
Following the music documentary "Between the Devil and the Wide Blue Sea" (2005), Karmakar reunited with Manfred Zapatka for "Hamburger Lektionen," a scenic reading of lectures by a radical Islamic cleric in Hamburg, similar in style to "Das Himmler-Projekt."
Karmakar contributed the segment "Ramses," a portrait of an Iranian bar owner in Berlin's red-light district, to the omnibus film "Deutschland '09 – 13 kurze Filme zur Lage der Nation" (2009). With "Ramses," he paid tribute to "Utopia," one of his favorite films, which he requested to be screened in a retrospective dedicated to him in Vienna in 2010.
"Villalobos" (2009), focusing on DJ Ricardo Villalobos, concluded Karmakar's informal trilogy of documentaries on music and club culture. It was followed by "Die Herde des Herrn" (2011), examining the aftermath of Pope John Paul II's death and the election of Pope Benedict XVI. "Angriff auf die Demokratie – Eine Intervention," a compelling look at Europe’s political and economic crisis, premiered in the Panorama section of the 2012 Berlin IFF.
In subsequent years, Karmakar completed several short to mid-length documentaries and film essays, including a contribution to the German pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale. From 2012 to 2013, he was a fellow at Harvard University's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. In November 2014, he received the DEFA-Stiftung award for outstanding contributions to German cinema. His feature-length documentary "Denk ich an Deutschland in der Nacht" premiered at the 2017 Berlin IFF, portraying five influential DJs from Germany’s techno and electronic music scene.
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