Biography
Bruno Ganz (March 22, 1941 – February 16, 2019) was a Swiss actor who debuted at the theatre in 1961 and gained there a good reputation as a solid, young actor. In 1970 he founded with 'Peter Stein' the theatre company "Schaubuehne" of Berlin. His debut at the movies was early and unsuccessful in 1960. Only in 1975 after "Sommergaeste (1975)" he could show his talent as a reflexive actor with tendencies towards introspection.
Known For
Complete Filmography
Bruno Ganz - The Longing Revolutionary
2022
as Lui-même
Who the F... is Roger Rossmeisl
2020
as Narrator (voice)
A 90'- documentary about Roger Raymond Rossmeisl (1927-1979), the most overlooked great guitar maker of all time. Roger's voice is spoken by Bruno Gan...
Wim Wenders, Desperado
2020
as Self (archive footage)
"Wings Of Desire" and "Buena Vista Social Club", "Paris, Texas" and "The State Of Things": Wim Wenders is considered one of the pioneers of New German...
Winter Journey
2019
as George Goldsmith
Tucson, Arizona, September 1996. At the request of his son Martin, George Goldsmith tells him of his past in Nazi Germany as a member of a family of J...
The Naked King - 18 Fragments on Revolution
2019
as Narrator German (voice)
In 1979, a revolution in Iran. In 1980, a revolution in Poland. The fall of the Shah, the “King of Kings,” in Iran. Mass strikes and the foundation of...
A Hidden Life
2019
as Richter
Austrian farmer Franz Jägerstätter faces the threat of execution for refusing to fight for the Nazis during World War II.
The Witness
2019
as Nikola Radin
An action drama about an enthusiastic junior officer from the Hague War Tribunal in pursuit of justice.
The Tobacconist
2018
as Sigmund Freud
Vienna, 1937, on the eve of the annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany. The young and inexperienced Franz Huchel begins to learn about both the joys ...
Fortuna
2018
as Brother Jean
Fortuna, a 14-year-old Ethiopian girl, has had no news of her parents since they crossed the Mediterranean Sea. Together with other refugees, she is g...
The House That Jack Built
2018
as Verge
Failed architect, engineer and vicious murderer Jack narrates the details of some of his most elaborately orchestrated crimes, each of them a towering...
The Party
2017
as Godfried
Various individuals think they’re coming together for a party in a private home, but a series of revelations results in a huge crisis that throws thei...
In Times of Fading Light
2017
as Wilhelm Powileit
Just before the fall of the Berlin Wall, the birthday celebrations of an East German family turn into a tragicomical moment of political and personal ...
A Jew Must Die
2016
as Arthur Bloch
A film based on Jacques Chessex' novel of the same title; featuring André Wilms as Chessex and Bruno Ganz as Arthur Bloch, Swiss Jew killed by Swiss N...
Heidi
2015
as Alpöhi
Heidi, is an eight-year-old Swiss orphan who is given by her aunt to her mountain-dwelling grandfather. She is then stolen back by her aunt from her g...
Remember
2015
as Rudy Kurlander #1
With the aid of a fellow Auschwitz survivor and a hand-written letter, an elderly man with dementia goes in search of the person responsible for the d...
Amnesia
2015
as Bruno
A young composer moves from Berlin to the island of Ibiza and begins a friendship with an elderly woman whose painful past has caused her to reject ev...
Giovanni Segantini - Magie des Lichts
2015
as Voice of Segantini
Artist, anarchist, drop-out, paperless immigrant: Giovanni Segantini was all of this. He created, usually under the open sky, monumental, idealized al...
Dancing Arabs
2014
as Self (archive footage) (voice) (uncredited)
A young Arab is caught between cultures as he is sent to a prestigious Jewish boarding school in Israel in the 1980s.
In Order of Disappearance
2014
as Papa
Upstanding community leader Nils has just won an award for "Citizen of the Year" when he learns the news that his son has died of a heroin overdose. S...
The Counselor
2013
as Diamond Dealer
A lawyer finds himself in far over his head when he attempts to get involved in drug trafficking.
Age of Uprising: The Legend of Michael Kohlhaas
2013
as The Governor
In the 16th century in the Cévennes, a horse dealer by the name of Michael Kohlhaas leads a happy and prosperous family life. When a lord treats him u...
Night Train to Lisbon
2013
as Older Jorge O'Kelly
Raimund Gregorius, having saved a beautiful Portuguese woman from leaping to her death, stumbles upon a mesmerizing book by a Portuguese author, which...
Final Cut: Ladies and Gentlemen
2012
as (archive footage)
A film where anything can happen - the hero and the heroine changes their faces, age, look, names, and so on. The only same thing: The love between ma...
Of Women and Horses
2012
as Franz Mann
This microcosm of power and money has no time for Gracieuse, whose only assets are her talent, her fiercely stubborn character, and, most particularly...
Das Geheimnis unseres Waldes
2011
as Narrator (voice)
Unknown
2011
as Ernst Jürgen
A man awakens from a coma, only to discover that someone has taken on his identity and that no one, (not even his wife), believes him. With the help o...
Colors in the Dark
2011
as Fred
Anita and Fred have been a couple for 50 years, and happily married for nearly as long. They have two grown children, and their grandchildren are fini...
The End Is My Beginning
2010
as Tiziano Terzani
When an extraordinary man who has lived through all is approaching his end, he decides to call his son to join him for the last time at his home in Tu...
Taxiphone
2010
as Stranger
This is not how the young Swiss couple imagined their desert trip: on their way to Timbuktu, they break down and are stranded in the Algerian desert o...
The Day of the Cat
2010
as Kater
The Swiss President, called by all only "big hangover", is in trouble: the election is coming and according to surveys his chances are not very good. ...
Julia's Disappearance
2009
as John
A comedy about aging, youth and other eternal truths. Of all days, precisely on her fiftieth birthday, Julia has to experience that age makes you invi...
The Reader
2008
as Professor Rohl
The story of Michael Berg, a German lawyer who, as a teenager in the late 1950s, had an affair with an older woman, Hanna, who then disappeared only t...
The Dust of Time
2008
as Jacob
A, an American film director of Greek ancestry, is making a film that tells his story and the story of his parents. It is a tale that unfolds in Italy...
The Baader Meinhof Complex
2008
as Horst Herold
'Der Baader Meinhof Komplex' depicts the political turmoil in the period from 1967 to the bloody "Deutschen Herbst" in 1977. The movie approaches the ...
Ein starker Abgang
2008
as Heinz Kilian
When the writer Heinz Kilian goes to the doctor because of stomach problems, the doctor urges him to be accompanied on his upcoming reading tour by nu...
Copacabana
2008
as Herbert Schubert
One Who Set Forth: Wim Wenders' Early Years
2008
as Self
The early films of Wim Wenders are now regarded as landmarks of European film. Alice in the Cities, Wrong Move and Kings of the Road became foundation...
Coda: Thirty Years Later
2007
as Self
A behind-the-scenes look at the trials and tribulations of filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola directing his first film in ten years, Youth Without Youth (...
Youth Without Youth
2007
as Professor Stanciulescu
Professor of language and philosophy Dominic Matei is struck by lightning and ages backwards from 70 to 40 in a week, attracting the world and the Na...
The Ode to Joy
2006
as Kurt Heinrich
Based on the true story of the Bandō prisoner-of-war camp in World War I. It depicts the friendship of the German POWs with the director of the camp a...
Have No Fear: The Life of Pope John Paul II
2006
as Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski
The eventful life of a humble Polish priest who once decried the pomp of the Catholic Church "a circus" and labeled the Pope a "prisoner of the Vatica...
Vitus
2006
as Grandfather
Vitus tells the story of a highly-gifted boy (played by real-life piano prodigy Teo Gheorghiu) whose parents have demanding and ambitious plans for hi...
Pablo G. del Amo, un montador de ilusiones
2005
as Peter (archive footage)
Documentary about the personal and professional life of Pablo G. del Amo. He is the most influential movie editor in Spain.
Hitlers letzte Tage - Der Film "Der Untergang"
2005
as Self
Documentary about the 2004 movie 'Der Untergang' aka. 'Downfall'
Alias Kurban Saïd
2005
as Narrator
The mystery of the author of the 1937 cult novel Ali and Nino - a recently-rediscovered Romeo and Juliet of the Caucasus - is explored in Alias Kurban...
Downfall
2004
as Adolf Hitler
In April of 1945, Germany stands at the brink of defeat with the Russian Army closing in from the east and the Allied Expeditionary Force attacking fr...
The Manchurian Candidate
2004
as Delp
Years after his squad was ambushed during the Gulf War, Major Ben Marco finds himself having terrible nightmares. He begins to doubt that his fellow s...
Bruno Ganz - Ein europäischer Schauspieler
2004
as Self
Luther
2003
as Johann von Staupitz
During the early 16th century, idealistic German monk Martin Luther, disgusted by the materialism in the church, begins the dialogue that will lead to...
Wings of Desire: The Angels Among Us
2003
as Self
This is a documentary about the making of "Wings of Desire" (1987). The director, writer, actors, composer and other contributors speak at length and ...
Epsteins Nacht
2002
as Adam Rose
Jochen Epstein is released from prison after serving 15 years for murder. He is determined to emigrate from Germany and leave the past behind him fore...
The Power of the Past
2002
as Bogliasco
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Faust II
2001
as Faust
Second part of Goethe's Tragedy
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Faust I
2001
as Faust
Unabridged production of Goethe's Faust Ⅰ by Peter Stein's Faust Project.
The End of an Eternity
2000
as Self
Documentary that recounts the ups and downs of the shooting of Eternity and a Day (1998), focusing on the exhaustive preparation of the shot-sequence ...
Klaus Kinski: I'm not an actor
2000
as Self (archive footage)
Klaus Kinski is one of the few German actors who has achieved international fame. He made headlines. And disappeared behind them. Kinski lived his par...
Bread and Tulips
2000
as Fernando Girasoli
An endearing light comedy about a woman who spontaneously becomes a resident of Venice after her family left her behind. While enjoying the wonderful ...
WhoAfraidWolf
2000
A group of actors making their way to Rome ends up losing its way due to the fog, the darkness, the ice and their own feelings of guilt, suddenly gett...
You Can't Go Home Again
1999
as Narrator (voice)
A 1998 Dutch documentary about Klaus Mann, the son of novelist Thomas Mann. An openly bisexual writer who spent World War II in Amsterdam, Klaus suffe...
Eternity and a Day
1998
as Alexandros
An ailing Greek man attempts to take a young, illegal Albanian immigrant home.
Gegen Ende der Nacht
1998
as Fehleisen
August 1945. In a remote mill in American-occupied Württemberg, a quintuple murder takes place. The miller and his wife, their two sons, and their dau...
St. Stephen's: The Living Cathedral
1997
as Narrator (German voice)
St. Stephen’s Cathedral ranks amongst Austria‘s most famous cultural monuments. Yet, one would not think of that Cathedral being one of the most aston...
Deadly Silence
1997
as Hans Plache
A gay man's return to his family in East Germany begins a series of tragic events.
Saint-Ex
1996
as Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Poetic biography of author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
Lumière & Company
1995
as Damiel (segment "Wim Wenders")
40 international directors were asked to make a short film using the original Cinematographe invented by the Lumière Brothers, working under condition...
Il Grande Fausto
1995
as Biagio Cavanna
Diario senza date
1995
Faraway, So Close!
1993
as Damiel
Damiel is now married to Marion, runs the pizzeria “Da Angelo” and the two have a child. The solitarily remaining angel Cassiel is more and more dissa...
The Absence
1993
as Player
Four nameless people -- the old man, the woman, the soldier, and the gambler -- journey to a desolate wasteland beyond the limits of an unnamed city.
Night on Fire
1992
as Peter Keller
Enquiries into the murder of a young woman take the private investigator Peter Keller to the idyllic village of Schwant in Emmental. But, the more ent...
The Last Days of Chez Nous
1992
as J.P.
The story of sisters Vicki and Beth, when Vicki begins an affair with Beth's intriguing French husband.
Prague
1992
as Josef
Alexander is a young, emotionally-repressed Scot who, upset by his Czechoslovakian mother's death, journeys to Prague to scatter her ashes and track d...
Especially on Sunday
1991
as Vittorio
Four lighthearted stories set in the idyllic Italian countryside: an old grouch is befriended by a stray dog; a lonely widow spies on her newly-wed so...
Children of Nature
1991
as Engill
An elderly couple leave their retirement home to make one last journey back to their home in the Western Fjords.
Success
1991
as Jacques Tüverlin
For fans of history, this glimpse of Munich society in the 1920s will be a much-treasured event. The story revolves around an art-gallery manager who ...
The Architecture of Doom
1989
as German narrator (voice)
Featuring never-before-seen film footage of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime, The Architecture of Doom captures the inner workings of the Third Reich ...
Strapless
1989
as Raymond Forbes
An expatriate American doctor in London allows herself to lighten up when her freewheeling younger sister and a mysterious man enter her life. Her inh...
Bankomatt
1989
as Bruno
With three of his companions in a fatal gas-station robbery drowned while evading a police roadblock, the surviving young thug has no reason to turn h...
Love of a Woman
1988
as Franco Bassani
Gabriella, a young twenty-five year old from Milan , is married to the lawyer Bernasconi, a middle-aged man, without scruples, who in the past had bee...
The Legendary Life of Ernest Hemingway
1988
as Ezra Pound
Larger-than-life American author Ernest Hemingway is the subject of this biopic that chronicles the famous writer's life from childhood to his suicide...
Wings of Desire
1987
as Damiel
Two angels, Damiel and Cassiel, glide through the streets of Berlin, observing the bustling population, providing invisible rays of hope to the distre...
Thomas Bernhard – Ein Widerspruch. »Die Ursache bin ich selbst«
1986
as Narrator
Thomas Bernhard in Madrid.
El río de oro
1986
as Peter
During a long summer, the tranquility of a couple and their three children resting in a country house is altered with the arrival of the children's un...
Private Resistance
1985
as Gustav
Otto, a Jewish refugee who managed to escape from Berlin in the early days of WW2, is now the owner of an Amsterdam ice cream parlor. Otto's place soo...
Hands Up!
1985
as Self (1981 footage)
The reunion of a group of former medical students results in a flood of bitter memories.
System Without Shadow
1983
as Faber
Computer operator Faber works on securing computers for big companies and banks. His private life is rather dull until he meets a strange women, Julie...
Killer aus Florida
1983
A professional killer has been assigned to kill a woman he doesn't know.
In the White City
1983
as Paul
Fed up with the sea, Paul, a Swiss mechanic working in the noisy bowels of a merchant ship, lands in Lisbon.
Logik des Gefühls
1982
Georg, a self-confident man of 40, feels it as a heavy defeat when his wife suddenly leaves him. He has always been the superior man, to whom his wife...
Krieg und Frieden
1982
The third episodical film, after Deutschland im Herbst and Der Kandidat, in which notable German film makers reflect on the state of their country.
Remembrance: Film for Curt Bois
1982
as Self
Voted for in Sight & Sound's 2022 Greatest Films of All Time poll
Remembrance: Film for Curt Bois
1982
Director
Voted for in Sight & Sound's 2022 Greatest Films of All Time poll
Circle of Deceit
1981
as Georg Laschen
Georg Laschen leaves his family in West Germany to go work as a war correspondent in Beirut during the fights between Christians and Palestinians.
Lady of the Camelias
1981
as Count Perregaux
A young girl from the provinces, comes to Paris with one goal: to become a part of the rich bourgeoisie. To achieve this she will use her unique beaut...
La provinciale
1981
as Rémy Muller
In this drama, a provincial girl goes to Paris in search of her fortune. Although she finds the City of Light to be quite different from what she'd im...
The Inventor
1980
as Jakob Nüssli
In this interesting World War I drama, Bruno Ganz gives a compelling performance as Jakob, an obsessive inventor who lives in a Swiss village. He rece...
Polenta
1980
Two men and a young girl meet at the end of the world
5% de risque
1980
as David
A troubled gentleman named David ponders whether vegemite can be consumed undiluted without posing a health risk. Meanwhile his friend, a senior gover...
Lost and Found
1980
as Werner
Oppressed by her husband, her lover, and her obsessive mother, a bourgeois woman is reunited with a childhood companion at the central train station i...
The Making of 'Nosferatu'
1979
as Self
Werner Herzog discusses the making of "Nosferatu" on set.
Return to the Beloved
1979
as Dr. Stephan Kern
Julien seeks to reconquer Jeanne, his ex-wife, of whom he is separated and who lives with another man. He is prepared to go far to make it happen.
Nosferatu the Vampyre
1979
as Jonathan Harker
A real estate agent leaves behind his beautiful wife to go to Transylvania to visit the mysterious Count Dracula and formalize the purchase of a prope...
Knife in the Head
1978
as Hoffmann
One night when seeking his estranged wife, Hoffmann goes to the youth center where she works. The police are there rounding up radicals who frequent t...
Black and White Like Day and Night
1978
as Thomas Rosemund
A scientist who swore off playing chess after a nervous breakdown as a boy wunderkind, creates an undefeated chess program. But the Russian world cham...
The Boys from Brazil
1978
as Professor Bruckner
Nazi hunter Ezra Lieberman discovers a sinister and bizarre plot to rekindle the Third Reich.
The Left-Handed Woman
1978
as Bruno
Mourning for a lost relationship can be every bit as devastating as mourning for someone who has died. In this drama based on the director's own novel...
The American Friend
1977
as Jonathan Zimmermann
Tom Ripley, an American who deals in forged art, is slighted at an auction in Hamburg by picture framer Jonathan Zimmerman. When Ripley is asked by ga...
The Wild Duck
1976
as Gregers Werle
Consul Werle holds a reception in honour of the homecoming of his son Gregers. At the reception, Gregers meets his childhood friend, Hjalmar Ekdal, w...
The Marquise of O
1976
as Der Graf
A German Marquise has to deal with a pregnancy she cannot explain and an infatuated Russian Count.
Lumière
1976
as Heinrich Grun
Sarah, an actress nearing her forties, has invited 3 friends to join her for a holiday in Provence. This is the prologue for what happened a year ago ...
Summer Guests
1976
as Jakov Shalimov
A group of people from the wealthy middle class in engage in quasi intellectual quarrels and discussions trying to find some meaning in their comforta...
Die Bakchen
1974
as Pentheus
Austrian flmed staged production of Euripedes' The Bacchae, portraying a conflict between the deity Dionysus, son of Zeus, and his cousin Pentheus, ru...
Prinz Friedrich von Homburg
1973
as Prinz Friedrich Arthur von Homburg
The Ignoramus and the Madman
1972
Die Mutter
1971
Eine große Familie
1970
as Heinz Hallasch
Im Dickicht der Städte
1968
as George Garga
An inexplicable showdown between two men and the downfall of a family that has moved from the prairies to the jungle of the big city.
Die Schlacht bei Lobositz
1968
as Ulrich Braeker
Der sanfte Lauf
1967
as Bernhard Krahl
Bernhard works as a warehouse clerk in Munich. After being sentenced to probation for a physical altercation with a right-wing extremist, he could no ...
Die Unberatenen
1966
Frühlings Erwachen
1966
as Moritz Stiefel
Der Spaßvogel
1964
as Johnny
Chikita
1962
as Jazzfan
Brothel-owner Chikita Hausmann is forced to flee a South American revolution and sets up a new “house of pleasure” in a sleepy Swiss town, where the l...
A Roof Over Your Head
1962
as Fred Weber
A poor family with 6 kids that live in a ramshackle hut are suddenly offered a nice flat for cheap - with the landlord hoping they'll drive away their...
Der Herr mit der schwarzen Melone
1960
as Kammerdiener
Hugo Wiederkehr, as a dutiful bank employee, has to deal with all kinds of customers. Among other things, with the industrialist Meissen and his prett...