Alexander Kluge
Alexander Kluge (1932–2026) was a German filmmaker, writer, and theorist who served as the intellectual father figure of New German Cinema. After earning a doctorate in jurisprudence and working with Theodor W. Adorno in Frankfurt, he assisted Fritz Lang on The Tiger of Eschnapur before turning to filmmaking himself. He was one of the twenty-six signatories of the 1962 Oberhausen Manifesto that launched the New German Cinema, and co-founded the Institut für Filmgestaltung at Ulm to promote its critical practices. His first feature, Yesterday Girl, became the first post-war German film to win the Silver Lion at Venice in 1966; other signature works include Artists under the Big Top: Perplexed and The Assault of the Present on the Rest of Time. He also won Germany's highest literary honour, the Georg Büchner Prize, in 2003.