Otto Sander
Birthday: Born in 1941-06-30 in Hanover, Germany
Deathday: 2013-09-12
Otto Sander (born 30 June 1941 in Hanover) is a German film, theater, and voice actor. Sander grew up in Kassel, where he graduated in 1961 from the Friedrichgymnasium. After leaving school he spent his military service as a navy reserve officer and then studied theatre science, history of art and philosophy. In 1965 he made his acting debut at the Düsseldorfer chamber plays. After his first film work in the same year he abandoned his studies in 1967, and went to Munich to become a full-time actor. He is married to the actress Monika Hansen and is stepfather to the actors Ben Becker and Meret Becker. His career is closely connected with the Schaubühne theatre in Berlin under the direction of Peter Stein. Because of his warm, strong voice, which earned him the sobriquet "The Voice" (the English term is used), he has been used frequently as narrator for television documentaries, and numerous talking books in the 1990s. In 1990, he was a member of the Jury at the 40th Berlin International Film Festival.[1] Among his best-known film roles are the angel Cassiel in Wings of Desire and its sequel Faraway, So Close! by Wim Wenders, and a shell-shocked U-boat commander, Kapitänleutnant Philipp Thomsen, in Wolfgang Petersen's Das Boot. Sander also appeared in Comedian Harmonists, a biopic about the musical group of the same name. He has two brothers, the lawyer Adolf Sander, the scientist Christian (Chris) Sander, and a sister, the book dealer Marianne Sander. He also played a professor in the movie: The Promise about the division of Berlin by the wall. Description above from the Wikipedia article Otto Sander, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
TV Credits
Tatort
Character: Manfred Enders
Tatort is a long-running German/Austrian/Swiss, crime television series set in various parts of these countries. The show is broadcast on the channels of ARD in Germany, ORF in Austria and SF1 in Switzerland....
Polizeiruf 110
Character: Ludwig Stolze
Polizeiruf 110 is a long-running German language detective television series. The first episode was broadcast 27 June 1971 in the German Democratic Republic, and after the dissolution of Fernsehen der DDR the series was picked up by ARD. It was originally created as a counterpart to the West German series Tatort, and quickly became a public favorite....
Polizeiruf 110
Character: Lansky
Polizeiruf 110 is a long-running German language detective television series. The first episode was broadcast 27 June 1971 in the German Democratic Republic, and after the dissolution of Fernsehen der DDR the series was picked up by ARD. It was originally created as a counterpart to the West German series Tatort, and quickly became a public favorite....
Wolffs Revier
Character: Schenk
Wolffs Revier is a German television series....
Der Fahnder
Character: Bähr
Der Fahnder is a German television krimi series which was aired between 1984 and 2005. In the Netherlands the series was broadcast by the VARA from 3 October 1985....
Polizeiruf 110
Character: Richard Lansky
Polizeiruf 110 is a long-running German language detective television series. The first episode was broadcast 27 June 1971 in the German Democratic Republic, and after the dissolution of Fernsehen der DDR the series was picked up by ARD. It was originally created as a counterpart to the West German series Tatort, and quickly became a public favorite....
Die Harald Schmidt Show
Character: Self
The Harald Schmidt Show is a German late night talk show hosted on Sky Deutschland by comedian Harald Schmidt. The show first aired from 5 December 1995 to 23 December 2003 on Sat.1. Schmidt then moved his show to Das Erste as Harald Schmidt and Schmidt & Pocher, but he returned to Sat.1 on 13 September 2011. After cancellation on Sat.1, the show continued on Sky Deutschland in September 2012....
Wetten, dass..?
Character: Self
A long-running German-language entertainment television show based on the format of the British show You Bet! and the American show Wanna Bet?....
Das Boot
Character: Kapitänleutnant Philipp
Based on an autobiographical novel by German World War II photographer Lothar-Guenther Buchheim, Das Boot follows the lives of a fearless U-Boat captain (Jurgen Prochnow) and his inexperienced crew as they patrol the Atlantic and Mediterranean in search of Allied vessels, taking turns as hunter and prey....
SOKO Donau
Character: Conrad Ribarski
SOKO Donau is an Austrian television series....
Durch die Nacht mit …
Character: Self
Durch die Nacht mit … is a German documentary film television series produced by ZDF for Franco-German television channel ARTE. Locations are mainly in France or Germany. The title of the French version is Au cœur de la nuit. Two Celebrities spend an filmed evening together. One of them is the host who sets the location and the program. There is no moderator....
Tatort
Character: Otto Androsch
Tatort is a long-running German/Austrian/Swiss, crime television series set in various parts of these countries. The show is broadcast on the channels of ARD in Germany, ORF in Austria and SF1 in Switzerland....
Les Misérables
Character: Monseigneur Bienvenu
Set against the background of the French Revolution and based on Victor Hugo's classic novel this is the story of Jean Valjean who is sent to prison for stealing a loaf of bread and is released after nineteen years. He meets and cares for a beautiful but poverty-stricken young girl named Fantine who has daughter Cosette. After Fantine's death Valjean brings Cosette up but he is haunted by Javert - a policeman whose search for Valjean has become an obsession....
Aktenzeichen XY… ungelöst
Character: Kunsträuber
Aktenzeichen XY … ungelöst is a German television programme broadcast since October 1967 on ZDF that aims to combat and solve crimes. Until 2003 it was produced in co-operation with the Austrian public service broadcaster ORF and Schweizer Fernsehen, a division of the Swiss public broadcaster SRG SSR idée suisse. It was the basis for the BBC show Crimewatch, the Dutch show Opsporing Verzocht and its US equivalent America's Most Wanted. The goal of the programme is to throw light on unsolved off...
Preußen – Chronik eines deutschen Staates
Character: Self (Narrator)
...
Der Laden
Character:
The life of a family in Germany between 1920s and 1940s....
Zimmer frei!
Character: Self
...
Das Jahrhundert des Theaters
Character: Narrator
"The Century of the Theater" - From the "birth of the director" to the "heroes of modernity" - an overview of the world of theater - illuminates the interaction with the history of the past hundred years is also shown....
DAS!
Character: Self
...
NDR Talk Show
Character: Self
...
Unter kaiserlicher Flagge
Character: Erzähler / Narrator
...
Das Traumschiff
Character: James Korthals
The series is about a cruise ship that travels to places around the world....
Kulturzeit
Character: self
...
Das Traumschiff
Character: Johannes Lippelt
The series is about a cruise ship that travels to places around the world....
Movie Credits
Wings of Desire
Character: Cassiel
Two angels, Damiel and Cassiel, glide through the streets of Berlin, observing the bustling population, providing invisible rays of hope to the distressed but never interacting with them. When Damiel falls in love with lonely trapeze artist Marion, the angel longs to experience life in the physical world, and finds -- with some words of wisdom from actor Peter Falk -- that it might be possible for him to take human form....
The Tin Drum
Character: Meyn
Oskar Matzerath is a very unusual boy. Refusing to leave the womb until promised a tin drum by his mother, Agnes, Oskar is reluctant to enter a world he sees as filled with hypocrisy and injustice, and vows on his third birthday to never grow up. Miraculously, he gets his wish. As the Nazis rise to power in Danzig, Oskar wills himself to remain a child, beating his tin drum incessantly and screaming in protest at the chaos surrounding him....
A Love in Germany
Character: Narrator
In May of 1983, a man turns 49 and, with his 17-year old son, journeys to the village in Baden that he left 40 years before. He wants to discover what happened then, the truth about an affair his mother had with a young Polish prisoner of war, how the authorities came to learn of it, the lovers' arrest, and the aftermath. While his son takes Polaroid photographs, he retraces the steps of his childhood and interviews those who should remember. The story is disclosed in flashbacks that focus on th...
Conversation with the Beast
Character: Adolf Hitler Double
An American historian (Mr Webster) comes to Berlin to visit an old man who claims to be the real Adolf Hitler and to be 103 years old. The Hitler who died in 1945, the old man says, was just one of his six doubles - one for each weekday - while Hitler himself retired into a bunker below the S-Bahn tracks and married a second time....
The Film Narrator
Character: Salzmann
Germany in the Thirties. A movie teller realizes that his profession is not longer needed. Silent movies are not produced any longer. Telling stories is the only thing the man was ever good in, so he does not know what to do now. As political circumstances are changing dramatically these days in Germany, he gets new hope that things will again be going better for him......
Faraway, So Close!
Character: Cassiel
Damiel is now married to Marion, runs the pizzeria “Da Angelo” and the two have a child. The solitarily remaining angel Cassiel is more and more dissatisfied with his destiny as a mere observer of human life and finally decides to take the great leap. As Karl Engel he soon gets into a dubious milieu and finds himself as the assistant of the German American Baker, who makes his money with shady arms deals and sends films east in exchange for weapons. Cassiel’s adventure turns into a “thriller” wh...
Werner - Gekotzt wird später!
Character: Erzähler (voice)
Werner, Andi and Eckat play dice to determine the next king of the trio. When Werner is crowned king, he decides for all of them to skip work and start for Korsika....
The Heart Is a Dark Forest
Character: Helmut
A woman's life is destroyed when she discovers that her husband has another family....
Sass
Character: Vater Sass
...
Werner - Beinhart!
Character: Erzähler (voice)
Comic artist Brösel trades a magic pen that helps him come up with funny stories for the promise to fulfill one of Rumpelstiltskin's wishes. The resulting animated films show episodes of the life of Werner, a plumber apprentice and motorbike enthusiast and his friends. They are interspersed with the live-action portions....
Happy Too
Character: Himself / Gert Bastian
A raw, honest look at the relationship between filmmakers, actors, and the characters they create together. Sometimes comical, sometimes infuriating, always fascinating....
Little King Macius
Character: Erasmus (voice)
The sudden death of his father will take Macius the enormous responsibility that comes with being king, despite having only nine years. After being introduced as the new king, he will have the power to change the world and the things he does not like. Although his main enemy, General, will try by all means to avoid Macius performing a good job as sovereign, the young king has some good friends to help him in everything he needs. Animated feature, as the German animated series of the same name, i...
Nicht fummeln, Liebling
Character:
A man is thrown out by his girlfriend and moves in with a friend who is part of a group of terrorists plotting an assault on a department store....
Movie Days
Character: Maður á hesti
This Icelandic tale, loosely based on the real-life experiences of director Fridrik Fridriksson tells the saga of a boyhood spent in Iceland in the 1960s....
Girls under investigation
Character: Staatsanwalt Baldur Meixner
Two young women are hitchhiking when they get picked up by a man who proceeds to sexually assault them. He disappears after that. The suspicion that the „girls" - having a reputation of being "loose" when it comes to sex - killed him, begins to grow....
Rosa Luxemburg
Character: Karl Liebknecht
Polish socialist and Marxist Rosa Luxemburg works tirelessly in the service of revolution in early 20th century Poland and Germany. While Luxemburg campaigns for her beliefs, she is repeatedly imprisoned as she forms the Spartacist League offering a new vision for Germany....
Fly Away
Character: Eckehardt Tiedgen
...
Roland Klick: The Heart Is a Hungry Hunter
Character: Himself
The gritty, kinetic, visionary cinema of Roland Klick is ripe for rediscovery. After shooting with international stars, such as Mario Adorf and Dennis Hopper, Klick celebrated international success and achieved cult status. Yet after making only six features, he disappeared from the scene in a rather mysterious way. The story of an uncompromising film maniac....
The Break
Character: Erwin Lubowitz
A story about massive robbery from the safe of German railways set in 1946....
The Case of Mr. Spalt
Character: Otto Spalt
The filmmaker René Perraudin made five comedic short films with Otto Sander in the leading role and knits them into a feature film....
Das Boot
Character: Phillip Thomsen
A German submarine hunts allied ships during the Second World War, but it soon becomes the hunted. The crew tries to survive below the surface, while stretching both the boat and themselves to their limits....
Das Boot Revisited: An Underwater Success Story
Character: Self
In 1981, a film about the misadventures of a German U-boat crew in 1941 becomes a worldwide hit almost four decades after the end of the World War II. Millions of viewers worldwide make Das Boot the most internationally successful German film of all time. But due to disputes over the script, accidents on the set, and voices accusing the makers of glorifying the war, the project was many times on the verge of being cancelled....
Boundaries of Time - Caspar David Friedrich
Character: Gerichtsgehilfe
A study of German 19th Century Romantic art through the writings and paintings of Carl David Friedrich and his fellow artist, Carl Gustav Carus....
The Einstein of Sex: Life and Work of Dr. M. Hirschfeld
Character: Professor Steinach
The life story of Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, a German Jew, who as a physician established the field of sexology, and fought militantly against German anti-sodomy laws in the late 19th century. The script reveals main characters in Hirschfeld's life including impossible love interest Baron von Teschenberg, and Hirschfeld's aids- young Karl Giese and guardian angel, the transvestite Dorchen, as they establish the First Institute of Sexual Sciences in Berlin in 1920, and follows their struggles to keep...
One or the Other of Us
Character: Rulle Ruhlsdorff
Psychological thriller that focuses on the intense conflict between a university professor and a blackmailer....
The Killer Condom
Character: Mr. Higgins
In New York City, detective Luigi Mackeroni investigates a string of mysterious penile mutilations at the Hotel Quickie. After Mackeroni attempts to have a tryst with a gigolo he meets in the lobby, a carniverous condom bites off his right testicle and flees, which sets the detective off on a quest to stop the predatory prophylactic once and for all....
Marlene
Character: Bühnenmanager
Marlene is a 2000 German biopic film directed by Joseph Vilsmaier and starring Katja Flint, Hans Werner Meyer and Herbert Knaup. It follows the life of the German actress Marlene Dietrich and her success in Hollywood....
Nikolaikirche
Character: kirchlicher Superintendent
...
Palermo or Wolfsburg
Character: Staatsanwalt
An impoverished young man from Sicily travels to Wolfsburg, West Germany to find work. He takes a job in the Volkswagen factory after he travels through Northern Italy by train....
Four Against the Bank
Character: Eberhard Winter
One evening, the once successful architect Helmut is tired of the recession giving no jobs, he gets the idea of robbing a bank. He recruits members of his golf club that are not paying their fees....
The Promise
Character: Professor Lorenz
East-Berlin, 1961, shortly after the erection of the Wall. Konrad, Sophie and three of their friends plan a daring escape to Western Germany. The attempt is successful, except for Konrad, who remains behind. From then on, and for the next 28 years, Konrad and Sophie will attempt to meet again, in spite of the Iron Curtain. Konrad, who has become a reputed Astrophysicist, tries to take advantage of scientific congresses outside Eastern Germany to arrange encounters with Sophie. But in a country w...
100 Pro
Character: Narrator
Two boys (Ken Duken and Luca Verhoeven) try to get into the Munich Disco "Spy", but Dennis, the chief of Disco doesn't allow them to enter the club. This is the whole story - believe it or not, but director and writer Simon Verhoeven made a movie with a runtime of 88 Minutes based on this story. Low budget, but great fun. Nice pictures of Munich, good and intelligent ideas (Floh and Marcel are playing football, while Werner Hansch, a famous german TV-Sport-Presenter, reports their game to the au...
Der Mann Im Pyjama
Character: Rudi
A man just wants to buy some cigarettes - but when he hurries out onto the street in his pyjamas to buy a pack from the vending machine, a chain of coincidences leads to the most adventurous night of his life. On his odyssey through Berlin at night, he witnesses marital tragedies and love affairs, bank robberies and wild demonstrations....
The Marquise of O
Character: Brother, Forstmeister
A German Marquise has to deal with a pregnancy she cannot explain and an infatuated Russian Count....
Inge, April und Mai
Character:
...
Wer spinnt denn da, Herr Doktor?
Character: Nummer Sieben
...
Strike Back
Character: Kowalski
Dave knows what it is to suffer. Especially when he takes the rap for a gang of motorbike thieves and ends up in jail. All for the love of Corinna, his beautiful girlfriend. Refused parole and nearly insane with frustration he makes a violent escape to be with her and strike back....
Summer Guests
Character: Pjotr Suslov
A group of people from the wealthy middle class in engage in quasi intellectual quarrels and discussions trying to find some meaning in their comfortable and indolent life. Adaptation of the play by Maxim Gorky....
Das Loch
Character: Der Mann
A man dressed city-like walks across a wood and fields when he suddenly finds a perfectly circle-shaped black hole in the ground. The man begins to investigate the phenomenon......
Männer sind wie Schokolade
Character: Vater Lano
Linda Lano loves her job in an advertising agency and she also loves the men. But most men think of them as machos, as does charming big business Mike Badon. She expresses this bluntly and thus puts the success of their agency on the line. The widowed Mike is intrigued by the idiosyncratic Linda. When it sparks between the two, however, the attractive Susanne Badon appears. Since Linda misses the supposedly faithless Mike the pass. Linda only realizes that Susanne is Mike's younger sister when i...
E-m@il an Gott
Character: Petrus
...
Lumière & Company
Character: Cassiel (segment "Wim Wenders")
40 international directors were asked to make a short film using the original Cinematographe invented by the Lumière Brothers, working under conditions similar to those of 1895. There were three rules: (1) The film could be no longer than 52 seconds, (2) no synchronized sound was permitted, and (3) no more than three takes....
Wahnfried
Character: Richard Wagner
Wahnfried (German: Richard und Cosima, French: Richard et Cosima) is a 1986 West German-French drama film directed by Peter Patzak about the life of Richard Wagner. It was screened out of competition at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival....
The White Horse Inn in St. Wolfgang
Character: Prof. Hinzelmann
...
Wings of Desire: The Angels Among Us
Character: Self
This is a documentary about the making of "Wings of Desire" (1987). The director, writer, actors, composer and other contributors speak at length and in detail about how the award-winning film was devised, cast, filmed, scored and edited....
Krabat
Character: Narrator (voice)
A 14-year-old orphan named Krabat flees the horrors of the 30 Years War by becoming an apprentice to an ominous master of a mysterious mill. Krabat is not only taught the craft of milling, but is also instructed in the sinister world of the darker arts. When the life of his friend and protector is threatened, Krabat must struggle to free himself from an evil sorcerer's control in a gripping fight for freedom, friendship and love....
The Danube
Character: Franz
As the ship Donau makes its final journey from Vienna to the Black Sea, a young man sworn to fulfill a dying woman's wish lures a reluctant captain into a new adventure....
Am I Beautiful?
Character: David
Between Munich and Seville, the destinies of sixteen characters intertwine and intersect, missing each other or colliding head-on. They are all, without knowing it, at a pivotal moment in their lives......
Miko: From the Gutter to the Stars
Character: Loan officer Grop
Together with her bisexual friend and manager Stefan, singer Miko is working on a great career that has so far failed to materialize....
Life Is Too Long
Character:
...
Meine Sorgen möcht' ich haben
Character: Harald Bornemann
...
About Narration
Character:
Interdisciplinary studies put into practice is a plane on which HaF's interests and mine coincide. Ideas of fictional research projects in films emerge very early on, or of film as research device, allowing people from different disciplines to come together and discover something, to pursue a line of thought, or just be adventurous. These ideas correspond to a tendency we both have of accumulating knowledge from different sciences, for example so as to bring exact sciences like medicine together...
Kaluoka'hina: The Enchanted Reef
Character: Narrator (voice)
The vastness of our planets oceans guards unimaginable secrets. One of its most precious is Kaluokahina, the enchanted reef whose magic protects it against humans finding it. Kaluokahinas colorful inhabitants have thus always lived in peace... until the volcano erupts, and the spell is broken....
The Harmonists
Character:
Comedian Harmonists tells the story of a famous, German male sextet, five vocals and piano, the "Comedian Harmonists", from the day they meet first in 1927 to the day in 1934, when they become banned by the upcoming Nazis, because three of them are Jewish....
The Olympic Summer
Character: Sprecher
In 1936 Nazi Germany, a young, innocent apprentice, full of Olympic fever, leaves his rural village to see the ceremonies in Berlin. Upon arriving in the capitol, he meets a widow and a relationship blossoms. They spend an idyllic summer at her lakeside home, but the forces of totalitarianism cannot be held at bay and soon invade their lives....
Time of Vengeance
Character: Robert
Orhan, who is ten years old, comes to Vienna from a small Village in Anatolia. Armed with his grandfather's revolver, he intends to avenge his father, who was a "guest worker" and was killed in a car accident. On his quest for "vengeance", Orhan meets friends and enemies and finds himself in a totally strange world. Finally he realizes the absurdity of his plan and returns to his village....
Three Sisters
Character: Vershinin
A screen adaptation of Anton Chekhov's play about three sisters yearning for a better life....
Lyrische Suite. Das untergehende Vaterland
Character:
First part of Hölderlin-trilogy with Udo Samel, Otto Sander and Jean-Marie Straub....