Volker Schlöndorff (German pronunciation: [ˈfɔlkɐ ˈʃløːndɔʁf] (listen); born 31 March 1939) is a German film director, screenwriter and producer who has worked in Germany, France and the United States. He was a prominent member of the New German Cinema of the late 1960s and early 1970s, which also included Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders, Margarethe von Trotta and Rainer Werner Fassbinder.
He won an Oscar as well as the Palme d'Or at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival for The Tin Drum (1979), the film version of the novel by Nobel Prize-winning author Günter Grass.
Volker Schlöndorff was born in Wiesbaden, Germany to the physician Dr. Georg Schlöndorff. His mother was killed in a kitchen fire in 1944. His family moved to Paris in 1956, where Schlöndorff won awards at school for his work in philosophy. He graduated in political science at the Sorbonne, while at the same time studying film at the Institut des Hautes Etudes Cinematographiques, where he was friends with Bertrand Tavernier and met Louis Malle. Malle gave him his first job as his assistant director on Zazie in the Metro (1960), which continued with the films A Very Private Affair (1962), The Fire Within (1963) and Viva Maria! (1965). Schlöndorff also worked as assistant director on Alain Resnais's Last Year at Marienbad and Jean-Pierre Melville's Léon Morin, Priest (both 1961). During this time he also made his first short film, Who Cares? about French people living in Frankfurt in 1960. He collaborated with filmmaker Jean-Daniel Pollet on the 40-minute documentary Méditerranée released in 1963. The film has been highly regarded since its initial release, gaining praise from Jean-Luc Godard and consistently appearing in the popular book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die.

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