Fred Breinersdorfer (born 6 December 1946) is a German screenwriter, producer and film director.
Fred Breinersdorfer, born 1946 in Mannheim, studied law and sociology from the universities in Mainz and Tübingen and received a PhD from the University of Tübingen. As a young lawyer, Breinersdorfer started a practice as an attorney at law, specializing in constitutional and administration law in Stuttgart. In 1980, he started his writer's career with crime novels and film scripts. Breinersdorfer lost a close political race, running for Bundestag, the German Federal Parliament as a SPD candidate for the party of Willy Brandt. Until today he is fighting for author's rights on the national and European level. Not only in this field, Breinersdorfer became one of the most politically influential writers in Germany. 2015 he was honoured with the Federal Cross of Merit. After the race for office in 1994 and ready for a change, he closed his law practice to become a full-time professional writer. He lives in Berlin, Germany and has two children, Leonie, a lawyer and writer, and Julian, an architect.
He wrote his first crime novel in 1980, which developed into a successful detective book and movie series about French attorney Jean Abel. His credits include 12 novels, a formidable list of short stories, theatrical productions, radio plays, and now 75 movies, prime-time TV movies, series and shorts. "Tatort" is in Germany for 45 years the most successful crime show with an average 9 million spectators every Sunday on prime time. Fred Breinersdorfer created more than 20 episodes. His own law crime series "Anwalt Abel" was brought on air by ZDF/ARTE between 1988 and 2001.
Since 2006 he also works as a film producer and director. He became world renowned as a writer and co-producer for "Sophie Scholl: The Final Days" when the movie was nominated for the 2006 Academy Award (Foreign Language Film). His newest feature as writer and producer, "13 Minutes", directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel, was released at the Berlinale 2015 and is already sold around the world and released in the US 2017 by Sony Classics. 2017 the screenplay of the movie was acquired by the Library of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences (Margaret Herrick Library) for the permanent Core Collection. On the 2016 Berlinale his recent feature "The Diary of Anne Frank" has got its premiere. With this film Breinersdorfer has completed his trilogy about victims of the Nazi regime in Germany.
Fred Breinersdorfer was the president of the German Writer's Association (VS) and is currently a member of the German P.E.N. and the Deutsche Filmakademie. He was among others awarded the "German Film Award", the "Adolph Grimme Preis mit Gold" (known as the German TV Oscar), and nominated for several other prices.
