Full Name Curt Truninger Name Curt Truninger | Role Filmmaker | |
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Born 12 April 1957 (age 66) ( 1957-04-12 ) Lucerne, Switzerland Occupation film director, screenwriter, producer, visual artist, actor | ||
Curt Truninger & Margrit Ritzmann "Waiting for Michelangelo / Reto Salimbeni "Urban Safari"
Curt Truninger (born 12 April 1957) is a Swiss filmmaker, screenplay writer and producer. He also works as a visual artist, journalist and occasional actor.
Contents
- Curt Truninger Margrit Ritzmann Waiting for Michelangelo Reto Salimbeni Urban Safari
- Personal life
- Work
- Awards
- Feature Films
- Longform Documentaries selected
- References
Curt Truninger is a Member of the European Film Academy.
Personal life
Truninger was raised in Lucerne. His father Ernst worked as a banker and in the travel business. His grandfather Ernst was a popular local politician, journalist and restaurateur.
Truninger developed an interest in film at an early age, especially in French movies. As a teenager he met the renowned American photographer and editor of Camera magazine, Allan Porter, who introduced him to the world of photography and the associated arts. Truninger was also a UNICEF Ambassador and is an accomplished amateur athlete. He divides his time between Toronto and Zurich.
Work
After studying Social Sciences and Art History at Munich University, he graduated with a PhD from the University of Aberdeen, where he also taught. During this time Curt was a member of the Think Tank Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London.After leaving academia, Truninger returned to Switzerland, where he worked for the Swiss public broadcaster SRF. During the 1980s he was host of the film programme Neu im Kino, and honed his writing skills working for Swiss and German print media as a film and culture critic and photographer. He then went to Munich, where he worked for the Bavarian Public Broadcaster BR, contributing to their Foreign Affairs programmes such as Weltspiegel. Soon thereafter, legendary German cultural journalist Reinhard Hoffmeister, lured Truninger to join the team of the Arts programme Aspekte at the German Broadcaster ZDF. Truninger has also written and directed many documentaries and docu-dramas for ZDF and hosted the talk show "Begegnungen". His freelance work includes a documentary portrait of Richard Avedon, produced in collaboration with the iconic photographer himself.
After a brief excursion directing music videos, Truninger made a leap to feature films in 1996 with Waiting for Michelangelo, a critically acclaimed romantic comedy about four friends lucky in life but unlucky in love. It featured popular Canadian star Roy Dupuis, and was shot in Toronto and Lucerne. The film, distributed by Channel 4 in London, went on to become one of the most widely distributed Swiss films. Truninger also co-wrote the original screenplay with his long-time producer Margrit Ritzmann.
In 2001 he made his second feature film Dead By Monday, a black romantic comedy about love and suicide, starring Helen Baxendale (Friends,Cold Feet) and Tim Dutton (Ally McBeal, Bourne Identity). The film had its theatrical premiere in Italy and went on to win first prize at both the Portland Festival of World Cinema and the Monaco Film Festival and was co-produced with Wim Wenders' production company Road Movies Berlin.
In 2008 Truninger and Ritzmann adapted the cult play What Happened Was by New York actor/playwright Tom Noonan, into the feature film The Rendezvous, starring Eva Birthistle (Ae Fond Kiss, Ken Loach, Nightwatching by Peter Greenaway) and British actor Tim Dutton.) and Tim Dutton. The Rendezvous is a dark comic drama about two single co-workers whose attempts at romance result in an emotionally provocative evening. The World Premiere took place at the Zurich Film Festival in October 2010. The film had its Canadian Premiere in Toronto in June 2011. The US premiere took place at the Myrtle Beach International Film Festival in South Carolina in spring 2012 where it won the Best Drama and Best Actress awards. It received US theatrical release in October 2012. Truninger is currently preparing his next production, Zoë’s Brilliant Plan, an ensemble comedy about four women who pretend to be in love with the same man. Other future projects include the psycho-thriller "Georgia" set in the Deep South.
As a visual artist Truninger participated in a group show (Songbird ART) in Davos, Switzerland during the WEF. For his film The Rendezvous, Truninger also worked as the Production Designer under the alias of Sepp de Engelberg.
Awards
Dead By Monday won Best Feature Film at the Portland Film Festival of World Cinema in 2001 and in 2003 the Angel Award for Best Picture at the Monaco Film Festival. The Rendezvous won Best Drama and Best Actress at the Myrtle Beach International Film Festival, South Carolina, 2012