Oscar-winning producer Manfred Durniok (Mephisto) died at the age of 68 at the weekend of a heart attack.

Durniok, who had more than 600 cinema and television productions to his credit since 1957, produced Istvan Szabo's 1981 film Mephisto - which won the Foreign Language Film Academy Award, a BAFTA and German Film Awards. He also produced Szabo's Colonel Redl, Peter Lilienthal's Malatesta, Frank Beyer's Das Letzte U-Boot and Masahiro Shinoda's Die Taenzerin, among others..

In 1999, he became the only European so far to be given the freedom of the city of Beijing - Berlin's twin city - in recognition of his focus on Asia in recent years, and Durniok was honoured by the American Cinema Foundation last year with the presentation of its Freedom Award for his oeuvre.