Ulrike Ottinger

Ulrike Ottinger has been a unique and provocative voice in German cinema since her debut in the early 1970s. Over the past 20 years, she has directed 15 films, including feature-length fictions and experimental documentaries. Ottinger explored Berlin’s many subcultures and diverse populations in her early fiction films, which include MADAME X (1977) and TICKET OF NO RETURN (1979). Some of Ottinger’s later films include THE IMAGE OF DORIAN GRAY IN THE YELLOW PRESS (1983) and JOHANNA D’ARC OF MONGOLIA (1989). Her films have been screened at festivals and in movie theatres around the world to great popular and critical acclaim. She is one of a handful of women directors in Europe to have achieved international stature. Ottinger uses splendidly original visual effects to explore her fascination with unusual aspects of contemporary culture, whether she is migrating with Mongolian nomads across the vast valleys of the Taiga forest (TAGIA, 1992), or crossing, with her compatriots, the newly fallen border between East and West Berlin (COUNTDOWN, 1990). She has lived and worked in Berlin since 1973. (10/09)

Johanna d'Arc of Mongolia
A film by Ulrike Ottinger, 1989, 165 min., Color
Ulrike Ottinger's epic adventure traces a fantastic encounter between two different worlds. Seven western women travelers meet aboard the sumptuous, m...

Madame X: An Absolute Ruler
A film by Ulrike Ottinger, 1977, 141 min., Color
"Ulrike Ottinger has a larger body of work than almost any other lesbian filmmaker, and her rarely seen first feature contains most of the elements th...

Ticket of No Return
A film by Ulrike Ottinger, 1979, 108 min., Color
A portrait of two unusual but also extremely different women. One rich, eccentric, hiding her feelings behind a rigid mask, consciously drinks hersel...