5 Promising Directors From The 2000s (Who've Sucked Since Their Debut)

The Debut - The Lives Of Others (2006), Subsequent Films - The Tourist (2010).

German cinema threw up a host of great releases throughout the 2000s, including Oliver Hirschbiegel's takes on the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment (Das Experiment) and Hitler's final days in the Fuhrerbunker (Downfall) and Wolfgang Becker's darkly hilarious Goodbye Lenin, which looked at the final days of communist East Germany before its reunification with the West.

Another film to examine life in East Germany was Florian Henckel Von Donnersmarck's The Lives Of Others, which took home the Academy Award For Best Foreign Language Film. An emotional and uneasy watch, it sees long-serving Stasi (secret police) agent Weisler (Ulrich Mühe, who passed away just a year after the film's release) tasked with spying on a supposedly subversive playwright and subsequently becoming disillusioned with his role in the oppressive and controlling GDR regime in communism's final days.

Lured by Hollywood with a $100 million cheque for his next film, Von Donnersmarck switched scenery from the cold and drab streets of East Berlin to the glamour of Paris and Venice. Considerably lighter and more colourful in tone than his debut, it suffered from a rushed production and an overreliance on stars Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie (responsible between them for countless box office bombs) from a marketing standpoint.

Despite the films reasonable profits, its critical mauling has seen Von Donnersmarck sink without trace, having not even made another film in his native Germany in the decade since.