BERLIN.- Across his award-winning feature films, director and writer Christoph Hochhäusler probes the border between reality and illusion, holding the seen, the intuited, and the imagined in productive tension. Positioned between auteur and genre cinema, his films draw us into seemingly familiar worlds whose horizons extend far beyond what is shown. His films train an observational eye on complex, often solitary characters whose motives – caught between intrigue, manipulation, and desire – never fully come into focus.
Hochhäusler’s first solo exhibition at Neuer Berliner Kunstverein looks behind the camera to reveal his interdisciplinary approach to thinking through, and working with, cinema. Alongside film posters, set photographs, film-mediating videos, and publications, Hochhäusler presents his storyboards, notebooks, and shooting scripts for the first time, together with two photo-films, Séance (2009) and Das Paradies vertreibt uns (Paradise Lost & Found, 2026). In the experimental form of the photo-film – image collages with voice-over, working within the artistic tradition of filmmakers such as Hartmut Bitomsky and Chris Marker – Hochhäusler’s cinematic approach condenses into an interplay of language, sound, and image.
Séance combines views of an abandoned living space with images of book pages to form a science-fiction story, following the inhabitants of a lunar colony whose memories of their former lives on Earth are conjured through séances. In Das Paradies vertreibt uns, created specifically for the exhibition at the n.b.k. Showroom, Hochhäusler arranges photographs from the 1950s and 1960s – found at a Berlin flea market – into a narrative structure. Taking as its starting point photographs that each show a woman and a man against vacation backdrops, Hochhäusler’s script unfolds as a dialogue between an actress (Henriette Confurius) and an actor (Jakob Diehl), oscillating between analysis and appropriation of the pictured scenes. Made with modest means and free of the elaborate production logistics of feature filmmaking, these short films attest to Hochhäusler’s ongoing engagement with the production of reality in film.
A retrospective and discourse program accompanying the presentation at the n.b.k. Showroom will take place at Kino Arsenal from September 3 to 24, 2026.
Christoph Hochhäusler (*1972 in Munich) lives in Berlin, where he works as a director, writer, and film critic. After studying architecture at the Technische Universität Berlin, he studied film directing at the Hochschule für Fernsehen und Film München. His debut film, Milchwald, premiered at the Berlinale in 2003 and is regarded as a key work of the “Berlin School.” His feature films Falscher Bekenner (2005) and Unter dir die Stadt (2010) screened in the official selection at the Cannes Film Festival, with the latter earning the prestigious Günter Rohrbach Film Prize. For Eine Minute Dunkel (2011) – part of a trilogy of television films commissioned by ARD from Hochhäusler, Dominik Graf, and Christian Petzold – he received the Deutscher Fernsehpreis (German Television Award) for Outstanding Achievement in Fiction and the Grimme Prize Special.
In 2013, his work was featured in the major retrospective The Berlin School: Films from the Berliner Schule at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. His film Bis ans Ende der Nacht won the Silver Bear for Best Supporting Performance (Thea Ehre) in 2023. In 2024, the Diagonale film festival in Graz dedicated a comprehensive retrospective to his work. His most recent feature film and French-language debut, the gangster film La Mort Viendra, premiered in competition at Locarno in 2024. Hochhäusler taught directing at the German Film and Television Academy Berlin (DFFB) from 2017 to 2021, and most recently held a guest professorship in feature film direction at Filmuniversität Babelsberg (2025/26). He is the author of numerous writings on film and is co-founder and co-editor of the film magazine Revolver (since 1998).
