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Frauke Finsterwalder, born in Hamburg in 1975, studied literature and history in Berlin and worked as an assistant director at the Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin and at the Volksbühne. After working as an editor for Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin, she started studying documentary filmmaking at the Hochschule für Fernsehen und Film in Munich in 2003. Her first feature-length documentary, "Weil der Mensch ein Mensch ist", premiered at the 2007 Munich International Documentary Film Festival. Originally planned as a film about a youth camp and learning about democracy, the film evolved into a documentary about power games, group dynamics and the mechanisms of mobbing.
Finsterwalder's second feature-length documentary, "Die große Pyramide", about a gigantic, idealistic construction project in eastern Germany, premiered at the 2010 Max Ophüls Film Festival.
Three years later, she presented her first fiction feature film: "Finsterworld" (2013) tells of German sensibilities in satiric, sometimes surreal, fairy-tale fashion. The film, written in collaboration with her husband Christian Kracht, premiered at the Munich Film Festival and went on to win numerous awards, mostly national, but also at the 2013 Montreal World Film Festival, where it won the "Bronze Zenith" in the Debut Competition.
Despite this success, it took eight years for Finsterwalder to make her next movie: "Sisi & ich" ("Sisi & I"), a wild and eccentric reinterpretation of the myth surrounding the Empress Elisabeth of Austria (nicknamed Sisi or Sissi in German-speaking countries), for which Finsterwalder again co-wrote the screenplay with her husband. The premiere took place in February 2023 in the Panorama section of the 73rd Berlin International Film Festival. The film was released in theaters a few weeks later.