Ulrike Ottinger

Ulrike Ottinger, born in Konstanz in 1942, is a filmmaker, author, and visual artist. She is considered to be one of the defining voices of avant-garde cinema. From 1962 to early 1969, she lived in Paris, where she worked as an independent artist. In the early 1970s, she turned to filmmaking and developed a distinctive style in works such as Madame X: An Absolute Ruler (1977), Ticket of No Return (1979), Freak Orlando (1981), Johanna d’Arc of Mongolia (1989), Under Snow (2011) and Paris Calligrammes (2019) combining elements of fantasy, theater, queerness, and ethnographic observation. Her work has received international recognition in exhibitions, retrospectives, and at festivals, including at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the Berlinale. She has also directed theater and opera productions, including at the Berliner Ensemble.

Her most significant awards include the German Film Award, the German Film Critics’ Award—which she received multiple times—the Hannah Höch Prize, and the Berlinale Camera. She has been a member of the Akademie der Künste in Berlin since 1997 and of the Bayerische Akademie der Schönen Künste since 2020. In 2010, she was awarded the Cross of Merit on Ribbon of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. In 2026, her film The Blood Countess premiered at the Berlinale in Berlin.

See: https://www.ulrikeottinger.com