Andreas Prochaska

Austrian director Andreas Prochaska wore a variety of film production hats before making an impact as director on a diverse array of features, from the slasher picture "Dead in 3 Days" (2006) to the dark comedy "The Unintentional Kidnapping of Mrs. Elfriede Ott" (2010) and the historical action-drama "The Dark Valley" (2014). Born in Vienna, Austria, Prochaska was raised in the spa town of Bad Ichi. After studying journalism and theater arts, he began his film career as a production assistant and worked his way up to assistant editor on features like Michael Haneke's "Benny's Video" (1992). By the mid-1990s, Prochaska was serving as primary editor on German television series, as well as Haneke's original version of "Funny Games" (1997). The following year, he made his directorial debut on an adaptation of the children's novel "Die 3 Posträuber" ("The Three Mailrobbers," 1998), which saw positive box office returns in Austria. Prochaska worked steadily on made-for-television features and episodic series until scoring a huge hit with the horror-thriller "Dead in 3 Days." The low-budget slasher film was unique among Austrian films for featuring amateur performers speaking in regional Austrian dialects among its leads, which helped to boost its popularity among local audiences. A sequel followed in 2008, after which Prochaska made a successful transition to comedy with "The Unintentional Kidnapping of Mrs. Elfriede Ott," about a young pensioner who discovers that the elderly woman he has kidnapped to impersonate his grandmother is, in fact, the German actress Elfriede Ott (playing herself). The film was a colossal hit and earned numerous Austrian and Viennese film awards, and led to more mainstream projects, most notably the TV film "A Day for a Miracle" (ORF 2, 2012), based on the real-life story of a heart surgeon's struggle to revive a child on the brink of death. The telefilm continued Prochaska's streak of successes, winning the International Emmy for Best TV Movie or Mini-Series, and was followed by the critically acclaimed "The Dark Valley," a suspenseful "Eastern" about a mysterious stranger whose visit to a 19th-century village in the Alps brings violence to its residents. A major critical hit, the drama won eight German Film Awards and was submitted as Austria's selection for the Best Foreign Film Oscar.