Director: Caroline Link turns 60 – Stop the waste!

Oscar winner Caroline Link is concerned about climate change and environmental destruction. “There is nothing I fear more than the collapse of our nature,” the award-winning director told the German Press Agency in Munich on Sunday (June 2) on the occasion of her 60th birthday.

“Humans have always behaved stupidly. But if our ecosystem collapses, nothing else matters.” Her greatest wish is “that we finally stop wasting things.”

The new film that Link is currently working on fits in with this. “The Years with You” is a love story between a climate activist and a law student, both of whom come from different worlds. “I wanted to tell a story in which two people fall in love outside of their own bubble. A plea for more dialogue, so to speak,” said Link. But it will still be a while before the story hits the cinema. Filming will not begin until 2025 at the earliest.

Link is one of the big names in the German film industry. Her 1996 film debut, “Beyond Silence,” was a huge success and was even nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 1998. However, the Munich native only received this honor in 2003 when she won the coveted trophy for the film adaptation of Stefanie Zweig’s autobiographical novel “Nowhere in Africa.”

In her films, Link creates complex characters whose fates she tells sensitively, excitingly and with a great feel for the quiet tones. Often the films are about children, for example in the biopic “The Boy Must Get Some Fresh Air” about Hape Kerkeling’s childhood or in the film adaptation of the young adult novel “When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit”, in which a Jewish girl experiences flight and exile during the National Socialist era.