This year's recipient of Special Plus Camerimage Award to An Actor with Unique Visual Sensitivity is Klaus Maria Brandauer, Austrian-born artist who devoted all his professional life to the perfection of the acting craft. Although he is mostly recognizable due to his achievements in the world of film which made him famous worldwide, Brandauer's soul was always yearning for the theatre, in which he always had some challenges to look for. The award that he will receive in Bydgoszcz is first and foremost the accentuation of his merits for the acting profession.

Klaus Maria Brandauer in "Manipulation"
For Klaus Maria Brandauer is a versatile actor who could play each and every character, “tame" each role, understand each of his characters' emotions and states of mind. He was brilliant both as a diabolical James Bond's nemesis in “Never Say Never Again" and never-do-well husband of “Out of Africa's" heroine. He was Nero in Franco Rossi's “Quo Vadis?" mini-series, he was Georges Danton in the two-part TV film “La révolution française". With a great zest he embodied famous King Nebuchadnezzar, Nazi official Albert Speer and writer Oscar Wilde. He transformed himself into various Shakespearean characters - Hamlet, Romeo or Petruccio. In the theatre he always went for the hardest roles - he acted in the plays by Goethe, Moliere, Schiller and many others. Moreover, Brandauer speaks fluently in four languages - German, Hungarian, French and English - and he had main speaking parts in all of them.

Klaus Maria Brandauer received his education on the Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts in Stuttgart, thanks to which he always had this acting intensity and the awareness of the power of expression, two essential factors in playing his most known type of characters whose souls are somehow torn apart. Immediately after the graduation, he began his journey in the theatre universe, and after just a few seasons he was accepted into the famous Viennese Burgtheater. In the beginning of 1970s he was already a star in Austria and Germany; an actor who was greatly admired by all theatre-goers. In the meantime he tried small TV parts, though even after his feature debut in “The Salzburg Connection" and the subsequent success of the mini-series “Jean-Christophe", he thought of himself only as a theatre actor. That had changed after his brilliant turn in “Mephisto" by István Szabó, for which he gained an international recognition during the Cannes Film Festival.

Still from "Mephisto"
Klaus Maria Brandauer always makes his characters curiously ambivalent; it is not possible to simply love them or hate their guts. It was due to his acting skills that Bond's nemesis Maximilian Largo became more humane, and that made this one-dimensional character as interesting as the 007 agent himself. “Never Say Never Again" was Brandauer's English-speaking feature debut and it symbolized the beginning of his 1980s lucky streak. He was the Head of the Jury at Berlin Film Festival and a member of the Jury at Venice Film Festival. His supporting role in “Out of Africa" won him Golden Globe and Oscar nomination, and his subsequent turns in István Szabó's films made him very popular among European critics. American producers wanted him badly for their films (he even was to play Marco Ramius part in “The Hunt for Red October", though it was later given to Sean Connery). The artist, however, preferred to act on his own terms.

While staying true to his artistic vision and acting only in films in which he believed in, he declined the opportunity to became an acting superstar. Instead, he has devoted himself entirely to his artistic mission. He had his artistic mission to which he devoted himself entirely. “In art there is no classic and contemporary. Art is art. Art should be for everyone, and not for the ghetto, comprised of intellectuals," he said in one of his interviews. And he tried to make it happen. In the end of 1980s and 1990s he even gave it a shot as a film director ("Georg Elser - Einer aus Deutschland"). In the 90s he also starred in a few great films (“White Fang" based on Jack London's novel). And he was constantly refining his acting skills on the stage.

Still from "Out of Africa"
During the last decade Brandauer confirmed his brilliance. He took both acting (Francis Ford Coppola's “Tetro") and directorial challenges (his opera "Die Dreigroschenoper", based on Brecht's work, was a commercial success). And he never forgot about what he stood for as an artist. Not only will he receive in Bydgoszcz Special Plus Camerimage Award for An Actor with Unique Visual Sensitivity, but he will also present the festival's audience his latest film - Cold War drama “Manipulation", directed by Pascal Verdosci. We invite everybody to the screening of the film and to join us during the meeting with Klaus Maria Brandauer, the actor who is truly one of a kind.