Matthias Drawe grew up in a DEFA building at the border of Potsdam-Babelsberg and West Berlin. In 1970 he managed to defect to West Berlin together with his father Hans Drawe, a former DEFA dramatist, in a spectacular escape. Risking their lives, they jumped over the Berlin Wall by using an unsecured film ladder. At the beginning of the 1980s Drawe lived in a squatted house in Berlin-Kreuzberg, actively taking part in the fight for affordable housing, which provides the backdrop for his novel Wild Years in West Berlin. In 1991 he founded Kellerkino a small art-house cinema in Berlin-Kreuzberg, which specialized in independent films and screened the early shorts of the then unknown Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, who would later win an Oscar for The Lives of Others. After having shot three independent feature films in Berlin, Drawe moved to New York City and worked from 1995 to 2010 as a journalist for DeutschlandRadio Kultur the German equivalent of NPR. Drawe's radio features from around the world were brought to life by voice actor Christian Brückner, who provides the official German voice for Robert De Niro, thereby giving German listeners the impression, that it was De Niro reporting. Currently Drawe resides in Rio de Janeiro.