Biography
Alexander Hahn was born on March 23, 1967, in Riga, Latvia (then part of the USSR), to Olga Hahn, a textile specialist, and Waldemar Hahn, an X-ray engineer, tank commander, wrestling champion, and passive dissident. At age 10, Alexander left the Soviet Union with his parents and extended family—including his uncle Georg Hahn, an ice hockey coach; his grandmother Paula Hahn, a fish-selling dancing queen; his grandfather Erwin Hahn, an asthmatic railroad gardener; and his great-grandmother Miriamija Zaikina, who had only one tooth. He was raised in Bavaria, Germany, and spent a year attending a language school in Munich before enrolling at the Vienna Film Academy. At a film festival, he worked as an interpreter for Latvian filmmakers Ivars Seleckis and Talivaldis Margevics, and shortly thereafter, he filmed his first 35mm short feature in Latvia, just prior to the Baltic states’ declaration of independence from the Soviet Union. Alexander Hahn holds German citizenship. He moved to Austria in 1989 and graduated from the Vienna Film Academy in 1996. His debut feature film, "Far Away From St. Petersburg," won the Gold Special Jury Award at the 1993 Houston International Film Festival and was screened at the AFI Film Festival in Los Angeles. His collaborators include Maria de Medeiros, Chulpan Khamatova, Dominique Pinon, Tobias Moretti, Orlando Wells, Birgit Minichmayr, Detlev Buck, Roland Düringer, Otto Grünmandl, Yevgenia Kryukova, Daniil Spivakovsky, Erni Mangold, Aurelija Anuzhite, Igor Klass, Gundars Abolins, Justin Krish, Jerzy Palacz, Milanka Comfort, Bakhtyar Khudojnazarov, Reinhard Schwabenitzky, Hubert Sauper, and Markus Pöchinger.
3 wins and 37 nominations
