General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20264 min read

The Robber

The Robber (German: Der Räuber) is a 2010 Austrian-German feature film directed by Benjamin Heisenberg, based on Martin Prinz's novel of the same title, about Johann Rettenberger, a champion marathon runner who lives a double life as a serial bank robber.¹ The film premiered in competition at the 60th Berlin International Film Festival on 15 February 2010 and was nominated for the Golden Berlin Bear.²

Key fact	Detail
Original title / director	Der Räuber, directed by Benjamin Heisenberg, his second feature after Schläfer (2005)¹^•³
Source	Screenplay by Heisenberg and Martin Prinz, based on Prinz's novel about the Austrian criminal Johann Kastenberger, who died in 1988³
Lead cast	Andreas Lust as Johann Rettenberger; Franziska Weisz as Erika; supporting roles for Markus Schleinzer, Peter Vilnai, Max Edelbacher, and Johann Bednar¹
Premiere and release	Berlinale competition, 15 February 2010; Austrian release 26 February 2010 (ThimFilm), German release 4 March 2010 (Zorro Film)²^•¹^•³
Format	35 mm color, Dolby; running time reported as 96 minutes by the Austrian Film Institute and 98 minutes by filmportal.de¹^•³
Production	Nikolaus Geyrhalter Filmproduktion (Vienna) with Peter Heilrath Filmproduktion (Germany); shot in Vienna and Lower Austria from 23 April to 22 May 2008¹^•³
Principal awards	Bavarian Film Award for best young director (2010); Austrian Film Award 2011 for best director and best actor; Best Screenplay at Gijón²

Spoilers

Story and subject

The film follows Johann Rettenberger (Andreas Lust) from his release on parole after a six-year sentence for armed robbery. He immediately returns to robbing banks, masked and armed with a pump-action shotgun, while training for and winning marathons, and he lives with his girlfriend Erika (Franziska Weisz) in Vienna without her knowing how he obtains his money.⁴ He measures heart rate, exertion, endurance, and efficiency with the same detachment in training and in robbery, robbing up to three banks in a single day and outrunning the police on foot.³ When the authorities finally close in, he attempts to escape on foot from what Cineuropa describes as the largest deployment of police officers in Austria's post-war history.⁵

The story is a free adaptation of real events. In the second half of the 1980s, Johann Kastenberger robbed a series of banks in Vienna and its surroundings, always wearing a Ronald Reagan mask that earned him the nickname "Pumpgun Ronnie"; he had also made a name for himself as a marathon runner, and he died in 1988.⁴^•³ Television and newspapers covered his four-day flight, which he covered mostly on foot.⁶ In the film the protagonist bears the fictional name Rettenberger.³

Production

Heisenberg wrote the screenplay together with Martin Prinz, the author of the source novel, and shot the film for Nikolaus Geyrhalter Filmproduktion with the German co-producer Peter Heilrath. Principal photography ran from 23 April to 22 May 2008 in Vienna and its surroundings, with the Austrian Film Institute, Filmfonds Wien, Land Niederösterreich, FilmFernsehFonds Bayern, and the Filmförderungsanstalt among the funding bodies, and ORF, ZDF, and ARTE as television partners.³^•¹ FILMSTARTS lists the budget as 1,000,000 euros.⁴ The Vienna marathon sequence was filmed live during the actual event, which the Mapping Contemporary Cinema analysis links to the film's realist aesthetic.⁷

In his director's statement, Heisenberg described Rettenberger as "a kind of natural phenomenon driven by an inner energy pushing him to take running and robbing banks to an extreme," while the character also needs love, life, and intimacy, which Heisenberg called a dramatic contradiction.⁸

Style and reception

Critics placed the film in the minimalist tradition of the Berlin School. Heisenberg tells the story with sparse dialogue and few psychological explanations; the press kit describes the protagonist as an "endorphin-junkie" driven by an inexplicable desire to stay in motion.⁹^•¹⁰ On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds a Tomatometer score of 78% from 32 reviews, with a critics' consensus describing it as a complex, character-driven drama that avoids traditional thriller beats; Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave it 2.5 of 4 stars, calling it a well-made movie with insufficient interest in its hero.¹¹ Box office gross was $83,451 domestically and $208,475 worldwide according to Mapping Contemporary Cinema, and the film recorded 18,778 admissions in Austria.⁷^•¹

Awards

The film won the Bavarian Film Award (Pierrot) for best young director in 2010, and at the 2011 Austrian Film Award it won best director (Heisenberg) and best actor (Lust), with nominations for screenplay, cinematography, and best feature film.² At the Diagonale festival of Austrian film, Andreas Lust and Franziska Weisz received the acting prizes for 2010.¹² Other honors include Best Screenplay at the Gijón International Film Festival, the Prix des blogueurs at Festival Paris Cinéma, the Mavericks Award at Calgary, and the Golden Pram for best feature film at the Zagreb Film Festival.¹³^•¹⁴ The film was also shortlisted for the European Film Academy's Feature Film Selection 2010.⁸

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Crime, thriller, and mystery films (individual works) › 2010–2014 films › Titles M to W

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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