Jonatan Karl Dieter Briel (June 9, 1942 – December 26, 1988) was a German film director, screenwriter, and actor, born in Bodenwerder, Lower Saxony, and raised in Holzminden. He is best known as a specialist of the literary biographical film, with a body of work centered on 19th-century German poets and dramatists — primarily Heinrich von Kleist, Christian Friedrich Hebbel, and Friedrich Hölderlin.