Biography
Franz Osten (born Franz Ostermayr) was a German film director active in both Germany and India. Born in Munich in 1876, he trained as a photographer and, with his brother Peter, founded a travelling cinema company in 1907. He began directing films around 1910 and worked at Emelka Studios in the 1920s.
In the mid-1920s Osten partnered with Indian actor-producer Himansu Rai on a series of Indo-German silent films shot on location in India. These included The Light of Asia (1925), Shiraz (1928) and A Throw of Dice (1929). From 1935 he directed sixteen features for the Bombay Talkies studio, among them Achhut Kanya (1936) and Jeevan Naiya (1936). He returned to Germany after the Second World War and died in Bad Aibling in 1956.
