Born in tübingen in 1974 into a family whose best-known member, the German theoretical physicist Werner Heisenberg, formulated the famous “uncertainty principle,” Benjamin Heisenberg studied freie Bildhauerei (sculpture) at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Munich (1993–99) before enrolling at the HFF München in 1997 to study filmmaking. To this day, Heisenberg sculpts and also paints and creates video installations, and since the mid-1990s he has regularly exhibited his work in German art galleries. He graduated in 2005 with his first feature film, Schläfer, which followed a number of shorts, including Terremoto (1996), Alles wieder still (1998), Am See (2002), and Die Gelegenheit (2004). Schläfer premiered in 2005 together with Hochhäusler's Falscher Bekenner at the Cannes Film Festival in its Un Certain Regard sidebar and subsequently won the director the main prize at the Film Festival Max Ophüls Preis in Saarbrücken—one of Germany's most important film festivals for new talent.