Richter was born in Marburg and lived there until making his Abitur in 1980 at the local Elisabethschule. Wanting to pursue a film career, he worked as an intern for video productions and as an actor on stage. In 1982, he appeared as an extra in Rainer Werner Fassbinder‘s Veronika Voss.
A year later, he and actor Frank Röth produced their first film, Kolp (de), which was released in 1985. Many TV films followed until 14 Tage lebenslänglich was released in 1997, earning Richter favorable reviews.
The 1999 film After the Truth, a fictional account of an 80-year-old Josef Mengele‘s trial before a German court, did not receive funding from the German film foundation due to its controversial theme. It was financed privately by lead actor Götz George and others, and received a number of awards on film festivals. He also directed Der Tunnel, a made-for-television movie loosely based on true events in Berlin following the closing of the East German border in August 1961 and the subsequent construction of the Berlin Wall.[1]
In 2003, Richter gave his English-language directing debut with the psychological thriller The I Inside, starring Ryan Phillippe and Sarah Polley, which was compared to Memento[2] and The Butterfly Effect.[3]
Richter’s latest project was the television movie Mogadischu, an account of the hijacking of Lufthansa Flight 181 in 1977 and its subsequent storming by the GSG 9 special ops unit.
