'Others' filmmaker revels in magic hour

December 01, 2006 It's after audiences have responded rapturously to your breakout film, and before you have to get serious about topping that success. Oxford-educated German writer-director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck has been reveling in his extended magic time ever since "The Lives of Others" -- a drama set in 1980s East Germany about a Stasi officer who bugs the apartment of a successful theater director and his actress wife -- opened in Germany in March. By the time the director settled his long legs into a corner booth at Hollywood's famous Musso & Frank Grill for a pre-Thanksgiving interview in flawless American English -- he lived in Manhattan for six years as a boy when his father worked at Lufthansa Airlines -- his debut feature had already topped 1.6 million admissions in Germany.

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