---
name: "Hendrik Handloegten"
canonical: "https://film.one/person/hendrik-handloegten"
fi1m_id: "hendrik-handloegten"
imdb_id: "nm0359634"
tmdb_id: 17549
wikidata_id: "Q1605036"
roles: ["Writer","Director"]
born: "13 August 1968"
reviewed_on_fi1m: 3
average_fi1m_score: 79
average_as: "writer"
average_over: 2
updated: "2026-09-21T01:17:14.064071+00:00"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Hendrik Handloegten

## Identity

Hendrik Handloegten

- **Canonical:** https://film.one/person/hendrik-handloegten
- **Type:** Person
- **Fi1m ID:** hendrik-handloegten
- **IMDb ID:** nm0359634
- **TMDB ID:** 17549
- **Wikidata ID:** Q1605036
- **Same entity:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hendrik_Handloegten, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1605036, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0359634/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/17549

Writer and director. Born 13 August 1968 in Celle, Germany.

## Details

- **Work:** Writer, Director
- **Born:** 13 August 1968, Celle, Germany
- **Active:** 2003–present
- **Also known as:** Henk Handloegten, Hendrik "Henk" Handloegten
- **Titles on Fi1m:** 3: 1 directing, 2 writing
- **Frequently works with:** [Achim von Borries](https://film.one/person/achim-von-borries.md), [Stefan Arndt](https://film.one/person/stefan-arndt.md)
- **Average Fi1m score:** 79, as writer, over 2 titles
- **Fi1m score by decade:** 2000s 78 (1), 2010s 82 (1), 2020s 80 (1)
- **Elsewhere:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hendrik_Handloegten, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1605036, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0359634/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/17549

## Streaming the US now

- **Apple TV:** [*Babylon Berlin*](https://film.one/tv/babylon-berlin.md) (82)

For United States; add `?region=XX` for another country.

## Fi1m on Hendrik Handloegten

> Handloegten writes German history from the inside, for people who do not know how it ends. With Tykwer and von Borries on *Babylon Berlin* that idea carried sixteen episodes; his hand is hard to separate from theirs, and the plotting gets away from all three.

The best idea in *Babylon Berlin* (2017) is that nobody in it knows what we know. It is Berlin in 1929, the Weimar Republic has four years left, and everyone carries on as if it had forty. Hendrik Handloegten created the series with Tom Tykwer and Achim von Borries, adapting Volker Kutscher's crime novels, and the three of them share the writing and directing. If Handloegten has a signature, it is this: history told through the people standing in it rather than from above, and he has said as much himself. "We always tell the story from the perspective of our characters, and we stick to things that actually happened."

He came out of the Berlin film school, the dffb, with *Paul Is Dead* (2000), then wrote and directed *Liegen lernen* (2003), about growing up in the 1980s. The same year he co-wrote *Good Bye, Lenin* (2003) for Wolfgang Becker, in which a son hides a political upheaval from his mother. Our review found it funny and affecting, kept believable by Daniel Brühl and Katrin Sass, and noted that the story stretches further than the premise comfortably allows, which is a note against the script and so, in part, against him. He co-wrote *Love in Thoughts* (2004), made *Summer Window* (2011), and directed episodes of *Tatort* and *Polizeiruf 110*, the kind of crime television that teaches a writer how a procedural moves.

Then came the trio. Handloegten has worked with von Borries six times and Tykwer five, and the way they build *Babylon Berlin* is to divide scenes by location or point of view while passing the scripts between them. That makes his contribution hard to pick out, and we will not pretend to. What we can say is that the programme's virtue is the city, rebuilt in sets and costume and music, and we sat through sixteen episodes, delivered as two runs a month apart in the autumn of 2017, and did not want to leave a place we knew was doomed; there is a particular dread in watching people plan for a future we know they will not get. The fault is the plot, which wants to be a police procedural, a political thriller and a portrait of a city at once and asks the viewer to hold more than it can carry. Liv Lisa Fries holds it together; the scripts do not always help her.

The one reservation anyone raises about the series is whether three writers and directors can keep the quality up across so many episodes, and on our evidence the answer is: mostly. Fritzi Haberlandt, who has appeared in four of his projects, is the actor he returns to. Next he has co-written *Fatherland* (2026) for Paweł Pawlikowski, about Thomas Mann's return to Germany in 1949. Another year the country would rather skip, then, and another set of people who cannot see round the corner. He seems to like it there.

## Biography

Hendrik 'Henk' Handloegten is a German screenwriter and director. Born in Celle in 1968, he studied at the Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie Berlin (dffb), graduating in 2000 with the short film Paul Is Dead.

He co-wrote the screenplay for Wolfgang Becker's Good Bye, Lenin! (2003). Handloegten is one of the co-creators, writers and directors of the neo-noir series Babylon Berlin (2017–), working with Achim von Borries and Tom Tykwer. He also co-wrote the screenplay for Paweł Pawlikowski's Fatherland (2026).

Other credits include writing and directing Learning to Lie (2003) and Summer Window (2011). He is married to actress Fritzi Haberlandt.

*Sources: imdb.com, en.wikipedia.org, de.wikipedia.org, filmportal.de.*

## On Fi1m (3)

### Directed (1)

- *Babylon Berlin* (2017), Fi1m 82, Writer, Director, Creator — [page](https://film.one/tv/babylon-berlin.md)

### Wrote (2) — the average rests on these

- *Fatherland* (2026), Fi1m 80, Screenplay — [page](https://film.one/film/fatherland.md)
- *Good Bye, Lenin!* (2003), Fi1m 78, Screenplay — [page](https://film.one/film/good-bye-lenin.md)

## Complete filmography (12)

Every credit, newest first. Titles without a page can be requested for review on the HTML page.

- *Fatherland* (2026), Screenplay — Fi1m 80, [page](https://film.one/film/fatherland.md)
- *Babylon Berlin* (2017), series, Director, Writer, Creator — Fi1m 82, [page](https://film.one/tv/babylon-berlin.md)
- *Sechzehneichen* (2012), Director, Writer
- *Summer Window* (2011), Director, Screenplay
- *An Old Maid* (2007), Director
- *Love in Thoughts* (2004), Screenplay
- *Learning to Lie* (2003), Director, Screenplay
- *Good Bye, Lenin!* (2003), Screenplay — Fi1m 78, [page](https://film.one/film/good-bye-lenin.md)
- *Paul Is Dead* (2000), Director, Screenplay
- *Dunckel* (1999), Actor
- *Polizeiruf 110* (1971), series, Director
- *Scene of the Crime* (1970), series, Writer, Director

## Gallery

- ![Tom Tykwer, Hendrik Handloegten und Achim von Borries auf der Premiere von "Babylon Berlin" im Berliner Ensemble Agency People Image (c.) Daniel Hinz (2017)](https://film.one/media/person/96177/gallery-aa6fd7455aaa.jpg) Tom Tykwer, Hendrik Handloegten und Achim von Borries auf der Premiere von "Babylon Berlin" im Berliner Ensemble Agency People Image (c.) Daniel Hinz (2017) — X Filme Creative Pool, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1c/Babylon_Berlin_Premiere.jpg/1280px-Babylon_Berlin_Premiere.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail)
- ![Hendrik Handloegten auf der Premiere von "Babylon Berlin" im Berliner Ensemble Agency People Image (c.) Daniel Hinz (2017)](https://film.one/media/person/96177/gallery-435c8048c85d.jpg) Hendrik Handloegten auf der Premiere von "Babylon Berlin" im Berliner Ensemble Agency People Image (c.) Daniel Hinz (2017) — X Filme Creative Pool, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/23/Hendrik_Handloegten_Babylon_Berlin_Premiere.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled)
- ![Hendrik Handloegten](https://film.one/media/person/96177/gallery-149524f018fe.jpg) Hendrik Handloegten — X Filme Creative Pool, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/73/Hendrik_Handloegten_Babylon_Berlin_Premiere_%28cropped%29.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled)

## Awards

### Other awards — 1 won

- Neues Deutsches Kino award 2003: Neues Deutsches Kino award (won), for *Learning to Lie*

*From Wikidata, which records wins more completely than nominations.*

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/hendrik-handloegten