German film director and screenwriter, best known to international audiences for his work Good Bye Lenin! (2003). Becker studied Germanistics, History and American Studies at the Free University in Berlin. He followed this with a job at a sound studio in 1980 and then began studies at the German Film and Television Academy (dffb). He started working as a freelance cameraman in 1983 and graduated from the dffb in 1986 with Schmetterlinge (Butterflies), which won the Student Academy Award in 1988, the Golden Leopard at the Locarno International Film Festival, and the Saarland Prime-Minister's Award at the 1988 Filmfestival Max Ophüls Preis [de] Saarbrücken. He directed an episode of the television drama Tatort, titled "Blutwurstwalzer", before making his second feature Kinderspiele (Child's Play, 1992) and the documentary Celibidache (1992). In 1994, he co-founded the production company "X Filme Creative Pool" with Tom Tykwer, Stefan Arndt, and Dani Levy. From there he worked with Tykwer on the Berlinale competition feature Das Leben ist eine Baustelle (Life is All You Get, 1997). He was a member of the jury at the Venice Film Festival in 2004.