His uncompromising films deal in sadistic violence, sexual mutilation and the dark menace lurking within normal life. Michael Haneke, Austrian director of the acclaimed Hidden and winner of this year's Palme D'or for his latest movie, The White Ribbon, talks to Elizabeth Day about Nazi Germany, fanaticism, fatherhood – and his own happy childhood When people first meet the film director Michael Haneke, they generally expect him to be dark, edgy and more than a little bit weird. Perhaps they are mindful of the scene in Haneke's 1992 film Benny's Video , in which the blank-eyed teenage protagonist shoots dead a schoolgirl with a stun gun. Perhaps they are thinking of Funny Games (1997), in which two young men beat to death a dog with a golf club before subjecting a bourgeois Austrian family to an orgy of sadistic violence. Or... [read full story]
