Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#27674
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Hanna Schygulla represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 39 years in, and Hanna is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Hanna Schygulla appears in 10 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Hanna. Poor Things is the clearest case: a film rated 7.6 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, transformation, quiet performance. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for drama, romance, science fiction. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with François Ozon, Gero von Boehm, Béla Tarr and others, Hanna Schygulla helped set a standard other performers now audition against. Awards bodies have been slower than the work, which is usually the sign of a career built on choices rather than campaigns.
Poor Things (2023) as Martha Von Kurtzroc · Werckmeister Harmonies (2001) as Tünde Eszter · The Crossing (2021) as Kyona (alt)/Erzählerin (voice)
Career snapshot
Ranked #27674 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
10
1986–2025
Career length
39 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.6
Poor Things
Average Nutevio score
6.0
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.8
Werckmeister Harmonies
Most frequent director
François Ozon
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With François Ozon
Most common genre
Drama
6 titles
Average runtime
1h 52m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
6.8
out of 10
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio metric
Cultural impact and legacy, measured separately from craft — how far the work travelled once it left the cinema.
Nutevio Influence Score
6.5
out of 10
A quieter influence — felt inside the films rather than across the industry.
How far the work travelled past the people who saw it first.
What survives once the release-week conversation has burned off.
Institutional acknowledgement, weighted but never decisive.
Years of chosen, relevant work rather than years merely employed.
Statuettes, read as evidence rather than verdict.
Roles named without needing the film named alongside them.
Directors who wrote parts because this performer existed.
The reading other performers now have to answer.
Actor DNA
A fingerprint derived from the roles themselves — register, range and the kind of film they carry.
The shape of a career
Every performance plotted in time. Hover a point to read the title behind it.
Peak years
Where the scores, the awards and the sheer volume of work agree with each other.
Best decade
2000s
7.3 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. Werckmeister Harmonies — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
7.3
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
7.8
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1980s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. The Delta Force.
Most productive era
2020s
6 films
The busiest stretch of the catalogue — volume that reads as appetite rather than availability.
Range, mapped
Genres down the side, decades across the top. Warmer cells mean stronger titles.
| Genre | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | — | 7.31 film | 6.51 film | 4.94 films |
| Action | 6.21 film | — | — | — | — |
| Thriller | 6.21 film | 6.41 film | — | — | — |
| Comedy | — | — | — | 6.51 film | 7.12 films |
| Romance | — | 6.41 film | — | — | 6.72 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1986The Delta Force
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Ingrid.
Career peak
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Highest rated performance
2023Poor Things
7.6 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Most recent film
2025Yunan
The current state of the argument, as Valeska.
Our order
Every performance in the catalogue, ordered by Nutevio Score.
Every title
Filter by genre or decade, and compare any two titles side by side.
10 of 10 films
as Martha Von Kurtzroc
Directed by Unknown
as Kyona (alt)/Erzählerin (voice)
Directed by Unknown
From the library
Every movie and TV credit stored for this name in the Nutevio catalogue — filter by media, role or sort by rating.
Loading credits…
The defining work
#1
Tünde Eszter
Werckmeister Harmonies (2001)
Performance score7.6
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Tünde Eszter gives Hanna Schygulla a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Martha Von Kurtzroc
Poor Things (2023)
Performance score7.4
Poor Things asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Martha Von Kurtzroc is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Kyona (alt)/Erzählerin (voice)
The Crossing (2021)
Performance score7.1
The Crossing asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Kyona (alt)/Erzählerin (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Swiss Lady
Everything Went Fine (2021)
Performance score6.8
Everything Went Fine asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Swiss Lady is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movieStart here
A guided path through the work, ordered so each film explains the next.
Best entry point
as Tünde Eszter
Start here. Werckmeister Harmonies is the clearest statement of what Hanna Schygulla does — accessible, 139 minutes, and rated 7.3 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Hanna at the most legible performance, then move forward in time so each film reads as a response to the one before it rather than a repetition of it.
The Crossing (2021)
Keeps the drama register of Werckmeister Harmonies but asks for a colder reading of it.
Everything Went Fine (2021)
Keeps the drama register of The Crossing but asks for a colder reading of it.
Poor Things (2023)
Keeps the comedy register of Everything Went Fine but asks for a colder reading of it.
Yunan (2025)
Same director as Poor Things, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
François Ozon
Director
2 films together
Notably Everything Went Fine
Menahem Golan
Director
1 film together
Notably The Delta Force
Kenneth Branagh
Director
1 film together
Notably Dead Again
Béla Tarr
Director
1 film together
Notably Werckmeister Harmonies
Gero von Boehm
Director
1 film together
Notably Helmut Newton: The Bad and the Beautiful
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
François Ozon
Director
2 films together · 6.2 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Everything Went FineBéla Tarr
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Werckmeister HarmoniesKenneth Branagh
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Dead AgainGero von Boehm
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Helmut Newton: The Bad and the BeautifulMenahem Golan
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Delta ForceSix degrees
Follow the thread outward — director, film, co-star, and the film after that.
Categories of our own
Six editorial categories we apply to every performer we cover.
Most rewatchable
Poor Things
as Martha Von Kurtzroc
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
The Crossing
as Kyona (alt)/Erzählerin (voice)
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Poor Things
as Martha Von Kurtzroc
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
The Crossing
as Kyona (alt)/Erzählerin (voice)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Werckmeister Harmonies
as Tünde Eszter
If the career had to be argued in a single scene, our editors would pick one from this film and rest the case.
In their films' words
“You can build a whole film around a performer who knows when not to speak. Hanna Schygulla has known it for a long time.”
Head to head
Put two careers on the same scale and see where the argument actually sits.
Ours alone
Recognitions handed out by this desk, on criteria no awards body uses.
Career Achievement
Awarded
39 years of relevant work — not merely a long career, but a long career of choices.
Modern Classic Performer
Awarded
Defining performances delivered inside the last twenty-five years, in films already being taught rather than merely remembered.
Drama Legend
Awarded
6 catalogue titles in drama, each one a reference point for the films that followed.
Our desk
Best ending, best opening, best twist and the rest — categories we apply to everyone we cover.
Best ending
Poor Things
as Martha Von Kurtzroc
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Poor Things
as Martha Von Kurtzroc
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Peter von Kant
as Rosemarie
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Dead Again
as Inga
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
The Crossing
as Kyona (alt)/Erzählerin (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Crossing
as Kyona (alt)/Erzählerin (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
The Crossing
as Kyona (alt)/Erzählerin (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The Delta Force
as Ingrid
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Have your say
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Reference
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