Happy 60th Birthday, Detlev Buck!

1 December

Detlev Buck, a master of earthy comedies featuring laconic North German humour and lovable quirky characters, is a director, screenwriter, actor and producer. But a career in film was hardly his birthright: Detlev Buck grew up on the family farm in North Germany and initially completed an apprenticeship as a farmer. Before long though, he was drawn to film and made his first feature, Erst die Arbeit und dann? (Work and Leisure) in 1984, even before beginning his studies at the DFFB. In it, he plays a young North German farmer on a mission to soak in Hamburg's big-city atmosphere. The character anticipates the odd but lovable anti-heroes in Buck's successful later films.

The North German countryside remains present in his later films as well, as in the tragicomic Karniggels (Little Rabbits)  of 1991 and the road movie Wir können auch anders (No More Mr. Nice Guy, 1993),  in which a naïve pair of brothers get lost on their way to Schwerin in the east. Buck's first big commercial success was in 1996 with the comedy Männerpension (Jailbirds) – which incidentally also paved the way for the acting career of Heike Makatsch. In it, Buck and Til Schweiger play inmates in an unconventional resocialisation programme.

Buck's production company Boje/Buck produced Leander Haußmann's cinema debut Sonnenallee, in which East German teenagers in the 1970s enjoy parties and first love – and dance away the Berlin Wall in a utopian finale. The company also produced Haußmann's 2003 Herr Lehmann (Berlin Blues), a tragicomedy set in Berlin-Kreuzberg in the late 1980s that was based on the novel by musician Sven Regener.

After a prolonged break from directing in which he worked as an actor and producer, Buck demonstrated his knack for more serious themes. His 2006 remake of the young adult novel Knallhart (Tough Enough) is a nightmarish confrontation with juvenile criminality that received many honours including the Silver Lola at the German Film Awards.

Buck once again switched genres with the children's film Hände weg von Mississippi (Hands Off Mississippi, 2007). The screen adaptation of the book won both the Bavarian and German Film Awards as best children's and youth film. Same Same But Different followed in 2009, a tragic story of the love between a German backpacker and an HIV-positive Cambodian woman. The travesty Rubbeldiekatz (Woman in Love) struck a lighter tone in 2011 and attracted more than a million viewers to cinemas, as did his film version of Daniel Kehlmann's bestseller Die Vermessung der Welt (Measuring the World) in 2012. In 2017, Buck acted in the film version of the novel Magical Mystery: Alongside congenial Charly Hübner as the lead character – who has spent years in psychiatry and must navigate a completely altered Germany after the fall of the Wall – Detlev Buck gives a masterful performance as a crazed techno-label boss.

Since 2014, Buck has directed all five films in the Bibi & Tina  youth equestian series, most recently Bibi & Tina – Einfach anders ("Bibi & Tina – Just Plain Different") in 2022. Buck also makes commercial films including the well-known Nivea spots with Joachim Löw, the trainer of the German national football team at the time.

Measuring the World (2012), D: Detlev Buck

In the early 19th century, two scientists who couldn't be any diferent set out to measure the world – Alexander von Humboldt through incessant travel, Carl Friedrich Gauß through mathematical calculations alone. Despite all their differences, their curiosity and insatiable intellectual curiosity connect them in a deep friendship.

Film adaptation of Daniel Kehlmann's 2005 bestseller by the same name, which was one of the greatest successes of German post-war literature and was translated into more than 40 languages.

Images © Boje Buck Produktion