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Carl Schenkel was born in Bern, Switzerland, on May 8, 1948. As a teenager, he wrote articles and film reviews for a local daily newspaper, originally with the aim of becoming a journalist. In 1968, he began studying sociology and economics in Frankfurt am Main. At the same time, he worked for a press agency. Over the next few years, Schenkel also took on assistantships with a graphic designer and a photographer. His first own films were short advertising films, for example about the city of Frankfurt.
After a job as assistant director on Wolfgang Staudte's mini series "Lockruf des Goldes" ("Burning Daylight", 1975), Carl Schenkel moved to Munich, where he continued to work as an assistant director. Sigi Rothemund, for whom he worked on "Griechische Feigen" ("The Fruit Is Ripe", 1977) and the classic TV series "Timm Thaler" (1980), among others, became a kind of mentor to Schenkel. Schenkel made his own directorial debut under the pseudonym Carlo Ombra with the vampire and erotic comedy "Graf Dracula (beißt jetzt) in Oberbayern" ("Dracula Blows His Cool", 1979). His first film under his real name was the gritty Berlin small-timer milieu study "Kalt wie Eis" ("Strike Back", 1981), which featured the German businessman and playboy Rolf Eden, the actors Otto Sander and Hanns Zischler, as well as the musician Blixa Bargeld of the band Einstürzende Neubauten, and formerly of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.
After further assists, for example on Gérard Oury's Belmondo film "As der Asse" ("Ace of Aces", FR/DE 1982) and Harald Reinl's "Im Dschungel ist der Teufel los" ("The Crazy Jungle Adventure", 1982), Schenkel had his big breakthrough with his next own film: "Abwärts" ("Out of Order") is about four very different people who get stuck in the elevator of a high-rise office building in Frankfurt one Friday evening. The top-class, claustrophobic thriller received very good reviews and several film awards; at the Bavarian Film Awards and at the International Film Festival in Sitges, Spain, Schenkel won prizes for Best Director.
The success of "Abwärts" earned Schenkel offers from the USA. Between 1985 and 1987, he directed several episodes of the mystery thriller series "The Hitchhiker", some of which won awards, followed by the TV horror film "Bay Coven" (1987) and the crime thriller "Big Bad Man" (1989) with Denzel Washington, which was praised for its atmospheric images but otherwise received only mediocre reviews.
Back in Germany, he achieved critical acclaim with the American-cast novel adaptation "Zwei Frauen" ("Silence Like Glass", 1989). At the German Film Awards, the intimate drama about two cancer patients (Martha Plimpton and Jami Gertz) was nominated for Best Film. Schenkel then directed one of three segments of the TV thriller "The Edge" (1989) as well as "Silhouette" (1990, TV), a crime thriller starring Faye Dunaway as an accidental murder witness, in the United States.
His most commercially successful film was the thriller "Knight Moves" (DE/US 1991), starring Christopher Lambert, Diane Lane and Tom Skerritt. In Germany, the film about a famous chess master who involuntarily becomes the accomplice of a serial killer attracted two million viewers to theaters. At the Festival du Film Policier in Cognac, France, the film won the Critics' Prize. In the U.S., however, it turned out to be a flop. For American television, he made the thriller "Beyond Betrayal," 1994, with "MacGyver" star Richard Dean Anderson in an unusual villainous role as a violent husband.
Over the next few years, Schenkel worked alternately in the U.S., Canada and Germany. He made such diverse films as the horror thriller "Exquisite Tenderness" (CN/DE 1994) with James Remar as a psychopathic surgeon, the political thriller "In the Lake of the Woods" (CN/US 1996), the crime thriller "Kalte Küsse" (1997) with Marie Bäumer, Jochen Nickel and Thomas Heinze, and the adventure film "Tarzan & Jane" (US/AU/DE 1998). However, none of these films matched his earlier successes with critics or audiences.
With the politically tinged action thriller "Feindliche Übernahme - althan.com" ("Hostile Takeover", 2001) a German production about a stock market speculator who wants to take over an energy company with the help of right-wing extremist terrorists, Schenkel was able to achieve a respectable success with the critics. The American TV adaptation of Agatha Christie's "Murder on the Orient Express" (2001), with Alfred Molina as Hercule Poirot, also received favorable reviews. It was Carl Schenkel's last film. He died of heart failure in Hollywood on November 24, 2003 and was buried in Switzerland.