Unique among the Berlin School directors, Valeska Grisebach, born in 1968 in the Northern German city-state of Bremen, actually grew up in Berlin. After studying philosophy and Germanistik in Berlin and Munich, she enrolled at the film academy in Vienna. Counting Austrian directors Michael Haneke and Ulrich Seidl among her teachers, she also befriended key members of new Austrian cinema, including Barbara Albert and Jessica Hausner; the latter, according to Grisebach, continues to be one of her main interlocutors. The importance of Grisebach's Austrian connection for her work has not gone unnoticed. In his insightful essay on her second feature, Sehnsucht, Robert Weixelbaumer suggests that her work combines “the clear consciousness of form and the intellectual sternness of the Berlin School with the cultural-sociological interest in exploring the petit-bourgeois milieus of Austria, which fueled the films by Michael Haneke, Ulrich Seidl and eventually also the filmmakers associated with the production company coop 99.” Yet, in contrast to the tendency of her Austrian colleagues, Grisebach's interest, Weixelbaumer argues, “does not lie with the multifaceted proof of some theses but, in contrast, with her cinematic world's ability to offer resistance against preformatted thoughts, including one's own.”