Fred Breinersdorfer

Lawyers may lie, but Fred Breinersdorfer has made a career of spinning fiction. The renowned German writer dropped his courtroom aspirations in the 1980s and authored a series of detective novels. Rights to his books were snapped up, and the first of 19 made-for-TV movies based on his "Anwalt Abel" books bowed in 1988. Breinersdorfer wrote each of the adaptations personally. With an unrivaled pedigree for crime yarns, he was hired in 1996 to pen episodes of another popular police procedural, "Tatort," and by 2007 he had written a total of 18 feature-length installments of the show. It was only a matter of time before Breinersdorfer made it to the big screen. In 2005, his biopic "Sophie Scholl: The Final Days" became an international sensation. The film was nominated in five categories at the German Film Awards that year, and took home trophies for both German Film of the Year and Outstanding Feature Film. Stateside, "Sophie Scholl" received an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film. In 2009, Breinersdorfer took the director's chair for two features, the hotel romance "Zwischen Heute und Morgen," and the World War II documentary "Andula -- Besuch in einem Anderen Leben." Stretching his creative wings, Breinersdorfer stepped in as a producer for the uplifting 2010 adventure flick "Der Mann der ber Autos Sprang."