Michael Haneke

Born 23 March 1942, Haneke began with a trilogy — The Seventh Continent (1989), Benny's Video (1992), 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance (1994) — each dissecting a bureaucratic society where real bonds had withered into collective malaise, consumerism bleeding into violence. The Piano Teacher (2001) won Cannes' Grand Prix. He remade Funny Games in English nearly shot-for-shot in 2007, a provocation about audience complicity. The White Ribbon (2009) and Amour (2012) each took the Palme d'Or; the latter won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. He teaches film direction at the Film Acade…