Ivan Passer

Ivan M. Passer (* July 10, 1933 in Prague, Czechoslovakia) is a Czech film director and screenwriter.

Life

Ivan M. Passer was born as the son of Jewish- Catholic parents in Prague. His parents were sent by the Nazis in a labor camp in Klettendorf and settled after the war in 1947 divorced. While his mother remarried in Slovakia, he stayed with his sister Eva with his father and grandfather. Because of his peasant origin and religion, he was exposed to in his youth reprisals. He had several jobs, such as in a factory and on site as a bricklayer before he was admitted to study at the Film and Television Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts.

There he studied from 1955 until 1958. Relatively quickly, he found the work of director Milos Forman as an assistant director a job and turned with him several movies that counted later the Czech New Wave. During the Prague Spring, Soviet troops occupied the Czech Republic, he fled the country in 1969 and emigrated to the United States. Until 1979 he remained in New York City, where he made ​​films like Law and Disorder and Silver Bears. In 1975, he staged with an international cast ( Omar Sharif, Karen Black, Bernhard Wicki ) the predominantly German -produced film flop Frankenstein's haunted castle. He then moved to Los Angeles and could with Cutter's Way - No Mercy celebrate his first major success.

He had his greatest success in 1992 with the film biography of Stalin, which was allowed to be turned not only the first feature film to the original sites, but also the lead actor Robert Duvall his fourth Golden Globe gave the Best Actor.

Filmography (selection)

Awards (selection)

• 2001: nominated for Outstanding Directing in a Children's Special for The Wishing Tree