Born in Prague in 1960, in 1968 his family moved to Austria due to the Soviet invasion. At the age of thirteen, he received an 8 mm film camera and started making short films, that will grant him an access to the Vienna Film Academy. At University he studied Philosophy, and then graduated in cinematographic photography and editing. In 1988 he made Tunnelkind, a film about the Iron Curtain. Since then his career has not stopped and since 2012 he is a professor of cinematography at the University of Cinema in Munich.