Sebastian Brauneis (born Sebastian Carl Brauneis, 1978, Vienna) is an Austrian film director, screenwriter, and former lecturer at the Max Reinhardt Seminar.
Sebastian Brauneis (born Sebastian Carl Brauneis, 1978, Vienna) is an Austrian film director, screenwriter, and former lecturer at the Max Reinhardt Seminar.
Brauneis grew up as the eldest of six siblings, spending part of his childhood in several countries of the Eastern Bloc and later in Vienna. His father, Carl Brauneis, worked as a war correspondent and cameraman.
In Vienna, he studied film studies and medicine. Since the late 1990s, he has also worked as a DJ. [1]
In 1999, he joined the independent Viennese television station TIV, where, together with Wolfgang Kopper, he produced, designed, and hosted the show Schwerpunkt Allgemeines for fifteen months.
From 2002 onward, Brauneis directed more than forty episodes of the ORF television series Sendung ohne Namen.
He also worked as a DJ and MC in Viennese clubs and bars such as Flex, Chelsea, Steins Diner, and Roxy.
Beginning in 2007, he collaborated with Christoph Grissemann and Dirk Stermann on their late-night show Willkommen Österreich .
In spring 2012, he directed another late-night format, Demokratie. Die Show, and later that year brought Diana Köhle’s Liebes Tagebuch format to ORF television.
With Bösterreich (2014), Brauneis directed his first full television series. Produced by Superfilm, the black comedy starred Nicholas Ofczarek and Robert Palfrader in dual roles. The series described itself as “a humorous sightseeing tour through the emotional backyards of a blessed island in the heart of Europe.” The sole season aired on ORF.
In October 2014, Brauneis staged the performance Reise durch den Arsch der Welt (“Journey Through the Ass of the World”) for the opening of Werk X, a bus tour through the district of Meidling.
In 2017 he began work on his first feature film, Zauberer, based on a short story by Clemens J. Setz. Brauneis and Setz co-wrote the screenplay. Zauberer premiered at the Filmfestival Max Ophüls Preis in Saarbrücken in 2018.
In the summer of 2019 he started shooting 3freunde2feinde, a comedy he also produced. [2] The film premiered at the Diagonale in Graz in 2020.
During the pandemic summer of 2020, Brauneis filmed the melodrama 1 Verabredung im Herbst in Vienna and Graz with many of the same collaborators as his previous production. The cast included Lukas Watzl, Marlene Hauser, Christoph Kohlbacher, Noah Perktold, Michaela Schausberger, Julia Franz Richter, Felix Rank, and Christoph Radakovits.
In 2023, he directed the feature film Die Vermieterin (“The Landlady”). [3] [4]
In winter 2024, he began shooting the film AMS, about the “relentless bureaucratic traps” of Austria’s Arbeitsmarktservice (AMS). [5]
He is regarded as a representative of the Austrian New Wave. [6]
