 He expected to see "Doctor Dolittle" but was "exposed instead to" the German melodrama "Varieté".He cites this experience as the start of his interest in film.In 1996, he won a directing apprenticeship with Richard Attenborough on "In Love and War", and then went to study at the Fiction Directing Class of the Hochschule für Fernsehen und Film München (University of Television and Film Munich), Germany, alma mater of directors as diverse as Wim Wenders, Roland Emmerich and Maren Ade, who was Donnersmarck's classmate.