Barbara Sukowa received the Golden Ox for her life’s work at the Schwerin Film Festival. Versatile and in demand internationally, the now 75-year-old actress has always kept her feet on the ground.
With a career rich in highlights spanning several decades, Barbara Sukowa is without doubt one of the most important German actresses. Her enormous changeability and versatility, her depth and her commitment to challenging roles and, not least, her modesty. In her witty acceptance speech on the stage of the Stadttheater Schwerin, Sukowa initially weighed the Golden Ox in her hands with feigned irritation (“How am I supposed to understand this? Am I perceived as a castrated bull?”), but then found used the ox design of the award to note a nice analogy with her own career: After all, like an ox, she had always tried to be subservient to a director’s or filmmaker’s vision, and ultimately, of course, to touch her audience. With this metaphor of servitude, Sukowa underlined her attitude of always approaching her roles with dedication and discipline in order to fulfill expectations and at the same time maintain her artistic core, i.e., her integrity.
Born on February 2, 1950, in Berlin, Sukowa began her acting career in the 1970s. She attracted attention early on for her intense acting power, impressing in German and soon in international productions. She became widely known through her collaboration with the legendary director Rainer Werner Fassbinder, with whom she worked on several films. However, her career is characterized by a multitude of roles that demonstrate her versatility. Of her earlier work, Sukowa’s appearances in Lola (1981), in which she plays a small-town prostitute under Fassbinder, and Rosa Luxemburg (1986), in which she portrays the energetic, famous socialist and revolutionary with verve, are particularly noteworthy. Both films are milestones in Sukowa’s career and show her ability to play complex characters with depth, strong expressiveness and authenticity.
A quarter of a century after Rosa Luxemburg, Sukowa was to play the most significant role of her late work with director Margarethe von Trotta – alongside several other collaborations. In Hannah Arendt (2012), Sukowa congenially portrays the famous philosopher and political thinker and her relationship with her mentor Martin Heidegger. Her performance was highly praised internationally and once again emphasized her ability to embody (and spiritualize) intellectual and strong female roles with virtuosity. But she also regularly convinces with great performances in smaller films, for example in the fine relationship drama Two of Us (Deux), (Filippo Meneghetti, 2019). Here she impresses alongside Martine Chevallier with her French-speaking, multi-faceted performance as a lesbian lover. She was the first German actress to receive a Prix Lumière for her performance – as if any further international recognition was needed. Sukowa is also remembered as a scientist in the science fiction series 12 Monkeys (Travis Fickett, Terry Matalas, 2015-2018) and in the German comedy Frau Müller muss weg! (Sönke Wortmann, 2015). Despite her success, she has always remained down to earth. She is known for her modesty, her professionalism and her willingness to take on new challenges time and again.
What Barbara Sukowa did not mention in her acceptance speech at the 34th Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Film Art Festival in Schwerin when she received her Golden Ox: In the Chinese zodiac tradition, the ox stands for diligence, reliability and service, a sense of responsibility, strength and endurance. But there is no need to make this parallel to her own attitude as an actress. You can see it in her films.
By Roman Scheiber
Edited by Amber Wilkinson
@ FIPRESCI 2025