Making of 'Amour'

6:00 AM PST 11/17/2012 by Alexandra Marshall

Michael Haneke, the rigorously unsentimental director, recruited two octogenarian legends to play a married couple at the end of life in his touching, personal and painful drama.

The awards ceremony that concludes each year's Cannes Film Festival is familiar turf for Michael Haneke. The Austrian director, whose rigorous style often has been described as chilly, has been there to pick up prizes for 2001's The Piano Teacher, a tale of sexual obsession, and Cache, his 2005 exploration of voyeurism. In 2009, he earned his first Palme d'Or for The White Ribbon, a study of the origins of terrorism set in a small German town on the eve of World War I. And in May he was awarded his second Palme d'Or for Amour.