Robby Müller (4 April 1940 – 4 July 2018) was a Dutch cinematographer best known for his collaborations with film director Wim Wenders and Jim Jarmusch.

Life and work

Müller was born in Curaçao, then Netherlands Antilles, in 1940 and moved to Amsterdam in 1953. He studied at the Netherlands Film Academy from 1962 to 1964.[1] He worked as cinematographer on a number of shorts before collaborating with Wim Wenders on his first feature, Summer in the City(1970). They went on to make many more films together such as Alice in the Cities (1974), Kings of the Road (1976), The American Friend (1977), and Paris, Texas (1984).

Apart from the movies with Wenders, Müller contributed to both mainstream US productions and independent films. His other work has included the hazy, yellow-tinted cinematography of William Friedkin's To Live and Die in LA (1985), Sally Potter's The Tango Lesson (1997), Dom Rotheroe's My Brother Tom(2001), Lars von Trier's starkly shot films, Breaking the Waves (1996) and Dancer in the Dark (2000), and Jim Jarmusch's gritty looking films Down by Law (1986), Mystery Train (1989), Dead Man (1995) and Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999).

He died on 4 July 2018 at the age of 78.

Awards and Nominations

• 1975 & 1991 Deutscher Filmpreis, Best Cinematography
• 1984 Bavarian Film Award, Best Cinematography
• 1996 New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Cinematographer, for Breaking the Waves.
• 2009 Bert Haanstra Oeuvreprijs for his lifeworks.
• 2013 American Society of Cinematographers International Achievement Award for his lifeworks.
• 2016 Manaki Brothers Film Festival Golden Camera 300 for life achievement.