In 1970 he managed to defect to West Berlin together with his father, Hans Drawe, a former DEFA dramatist, and his mother in a spectacular escape.

In 1987, through a mutual friend, he met Turkish director Serif Gören who had directed the critically acclaimed Yol - The Path (1982) for the incarcerated Yilmaz Güney.

Inspired by Gören, Drawe took up filmmaking in 1988 shooting The Art of Being a Man[1] (1989) on Russian black and white stock smuggled into West-Berlin from East Germany.

In 1991 he founded Kellerkino[2] 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 The King of Kreuzberg[3] (1990) and The Ivory Tower[4] (1992) in Berlin, Drawe moved to New York City and worked as a journalist for Deutschlandradio Kultur, the German equivalent of NPR.