Markus Schleinzer

Markus Schleinzer, born in Vienna in 1971, is an Austrian film director, screenwriter, casting director and actor. He acted in Austrian and German productions from the mid-1990s and from the late 1990s built a long career as a casting director on more than sixty mostly Austrian film and television productions, working with Michael Haneke, Ulrich Seidl and Jessica Hausner, a background he has often cited as a formative influence on how he stages actors. He made his feature directing debut with Michael (2011), which premiered in competition at the Cannes Film Festival and drew significant discussion and mixed reviews for its story of a man who imprisons a child in his basement. His second feature, Angelo (2018), loosely inspired by Angelo Soliman and a boy brought to Europe and raised in Viennese aristocratic society, premiered in competition at the Toronto and San Sebastián festivals. A third feature, Rose, a seventeenth-century period drama starring Sandra Hüller, was completed in 2025.