Florian Habicht (born 1975) is a New Zealand film director. Florian was born in 1975 in Berlin, Germany and moved with his family to the Bay of Islands, New Zealand, when he was eight. He went to high school in Kerikeri before attending the University of Auckland's Elam Art school, and graduating in 1998.
There he began to make films using his classmates as actors and collaborators. The first of these to gain recognition was Leibestraume (2000), about eccentric musician Killer Ray.
In 2003 he made the digital feature Woodenhead, a surreal musical fairytale for which the soundtrack was recorded first and then footage was shot to match. Woodenhead was nominated in the Best Digital Feature section of the New Zealand Film and TV Awards and the film screened at a range of international festivals.[1]
His next film Kaikohe Demolition(2004) was a portrayal of Kaikohe's demolition derby, the film won Best Digital Feature at the New Zealand Screen Awards.
In 2003 Habicht attended the Binger Institute Filmlab in Amsterdam to develop his feature script Permissive Paradise.
In 2008, he completed Rubbings from a Live Man, a performed documentary about artist and theatre practitioner Warwick Broadhead.
Habicht was the recipient of the inaugural Harriet Friedlander New York Artist Residency, which he took up in 2009. During his stay in New York City he filmed Love Story, which premiered at the opening night of the New Zealand International Film Festival in 2011.
His father is the acclaimed '60s photographer Frank Habicht, whose work, produced mostly in London and Berlin, has recently regained critical and popular interest.