Frank Beyer

Frank Beyer (26.5.1932-1.10.2006), film director: Beyer made most of his films for DEFA and was awarded several prizes in the GDR, including the National Prize of the GDR, despite his increasingly critical attitude towards the SED over the years. To this day, Beyer is considered one of the most important, also internationally renowned filmmakers of the GDR. After German reunification, he made several films for television in the 1990s and was awarded, among others, the German Film Prize (Filmband in Gold for his life's work, 1991) and the Adolf Grimme Prize (for "Abgehauen", 1999). Many of his films deal critically with the German history of the 20th century from the perspective of protagonists from the "simple average population", to whom he gives an individual identity, or with the effects of "big politics" on the "little man". (Photo: Frank Beyer during the filming of "Der Aufenthalt")