Germany

Mr Gay Syria

Ayse Toprak is a filmmaker based in Istanbul. She received a BFA in Film & television from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, and an MA from the New School. She has worked for Channel Thirteen/PBS in New York, and produced for Al Jazeera in London, Doha and Istanbul. Toprak is focused on how documentaries, their subjects and colorful characters can have a far-reaching impact on society; films that manage to trigger a national dialogue on neglected issues, eradicate prejudice or breach hitherto taboo subjects are her favorite medium, as well as personal and professional ambition. She is fascinated by people pushed to the peripheries of society who have personal, vivid, and compelling stories. Her conviction in filmmaking comes from her wish to tell the stories of such people to share their different and unique ways of looking at the world.

The Good Life

Award-winning documentary filmmaker, Jens Schanze, was born in Bonn in 1971. In 1987, he spent a year living in the United States. In 1990, he embarked on a Forestry degree at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich and, in 1992, began working in television as an assistant director. In 1994, Schanze spent a year in Bolivia working on a project for Conservation International before he began his studies at the University of Television and Film in Munich in 1995. Through Mascha Film, the production company which he co-founded with Judith Malek-Mahdavi in 2002, he has directed numerous prizewinning documentaries including Winterkinder (2005) and Plug & Pray (2010). In 2014, he became a professor of film and video design.

Bag Mohajer - Refugee Bag

Adrian Oeser is a Frankfurt-based journalist and filmmaker. He has studied television journalism at the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg since 2015. In the past few years he has made documentary movies including, With heads held high. Living and surviving in kibbutz Ma'abarot (www.docview.org), and the cross-media project, "An exception" (www.eine-ausnahme.de). Oeser recognizes the importance of bringing underrepresented perspectives to public discourse, and emphasizing both the political dimension and the ambivalence of human experience. He likes to listen to stories, and sees his films as an outlet for his interviewees’ perspectives.

Days of Youth

Yulia Lokshina was born in Moscow in 1986, and moved to Germany in her early teens. Along with culture and language studies, Lokshina has worked on various theatre and film projects, and curated a short film festival “CrankCookie”. In 2011 she shot her first documentary, At Home, on post-soviet immigrants in Israel. She began her studies of documentary directing at the University for Television and Film in Munich in 2011, and was awarded a media program scholarship by the Heinrich Boell Foundation.

The Long Distance

Daniel Andreas Sager was born in Berlin in 1985, and grew up in Moscow. He studied social anthropology and philosophy at Leipzig University, and directing at the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg. Sager attended the film school UCINE, in Buenos Aires, for one year with a grant from the State of Baden-Württemberg. He also participated in the Script Masterclass, Docu-Village, at the Haifa Film Festival in Israel with a scholarship from the Filmakademie BW. His diploma film. The Long Distance, received the NOFEAR! Award in 2015. He is currently a master-class student pursuing his Ph.D. at the Filmuniversität Babelsberg Konrad Wolf, and participates in the Nipkow Program as a Nipkow grant-holder. He also works as a writer and editor for ze.tt (zeit online), and as a freelance writer, director, journalist and cinematographer, living in Berlin.

Patriotic Lesson

Filip Jacobson graduated from the Film Studies line at Lodz University in Poland, and the Gdynia Film School in Poland as a director. He currently studies at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne, Germany. Along with taking part in a student exchange program at EICTV in Cuba, Jacobson has participated in several workshops: EsoDoc Workshops, Goshort Talent Campus, Polska Doc, and the Berlinale Talent Campus. He is involved in social documentary projects that search for new forms of expression in internet-based projects and through quasi-documentary forms. He has also organized film workshops for children and youth in Turkey, Romania and Poland. His first short film, Walk was awarded the Student Jury Prize at the Krakow Film Festival in 2012. In 2015, together with artist Angelika Herta, he created a web-documentary, www.Bobkowski-co-dalej.pl. The project was shot in France and was based on the journey of the Polish writer Andrzej Bobkowski. He recently finished shooting his feature-length debut, Foreigner, in Cuba.

Taste the Waste

Valentin Thurn was born in 1963 in Stuttgart, Germany. He is married and has three children. Thurn has directed and authored television documentaries for the national German channels ARD and ZDF, the French-German channel Arte, the international channels Deutsche Welle TV and Transtel, the regional channels SWR, WDR, NDR, BR, ORB and HR, and the Swiss Television, DRS. In 2003 he founded the film production company, THURN FILM, in Cologne, Germany. Thurn has written radio features and articles for magazines such as Die Woche, Die Zeit, Natur & Kosmos, and Merian. He has also published the books WüstenErde on desertification, Klassenfeind Natur on environment in Eastern Europe, and the Directory of Environmental NGOs in Central and Eastern Europe. He has taught at international congresses and workshops including: the Goethe Institute in Bombay, India; Foundation Miguel Alemán in Mexico City; Ecotourism congresses in Johannesburg, South Africa; Guayaquil, Ecuador; RTL Journalistenschule in Germany; Ecopresscenter in Macedonia; Third World Journalists Network in Germany; The Ethics in Economy Network of Germany; Fachhochschule Köln (University Cologne, Germany); and the 2008 International Congress of Investigative Journalists in Lillehammer, Norway. Thurn has served as a member of the founding board of the International Federation of Environmental Journalists (IFEJ), and Secretary General from 1993 until 2001. He is also a member of Reporters Without Borders, Netzwerk Recherche (investigative reporter’s network), and AGDOK (the German association of documentary filmmakers).

Last Men in Aleppo

Firas Fayyad is an award-winning Syrian filmmaker. He has directed, edited and produced several films, both documentary and fiction. He has participated in international film festivals and received recognition for his work about contemporary Syrian issues and the political transformation in the Arab world. His latest film, Last Men in Aleppo, won the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize for Documentary at the 2017 Sundance FilmFestival; the prize for Most Innovative Documentary at the second annual Critics’ Choice Documentary Awards; the IDA Courage Under Fire Award and received two nominations from Cinema Eye Honors.

The War Show

Andreas Dalsgaard has directed documentaries for over a decade. Educated in anthropology at Aarhus University and Paris VII, and film directing at The Danish National Film School, his award-winning films have been shown at more than 200 festivals worldwide. Dalgsaard is also a co-founder of the production company Elk Film, and writes and directs fiction for both film and theater.

Obaidah Zytoon was born in Zabadani, Syria in 1976. She studied English literature at the University of Damascus before becoming a radio host and producer, working both in Syria and internationally. In 2008, Obaidah produced her first documentary film, Through Women’s Eyes. Following the 2011 Syrian uprising, Obaidah co-founded the Syrian artist-activist collective Waw Al-Wasel, which produces multi-media art and short films related to the Syrian conflict. She has also coached and trained young Syrians entering media and radio production. The War Show is Obaidah’s first film as a director.

Girl-Hearted

Anne Scheschonk, born in 1977, studied Media Sciences and Cultural Anthropology with a focus on Visual Anthropology. She worked as an editorial assistant and set manager for television productions before finishing the Professional Media Master Class (PMMC) for documentary film in Halle, Germany, in 2011. Today, she works as a freelance author and filmmaker. Her documentary works portray those perceived as “other“, who are often socially stigmatized: the intellectually disabled mother, the transgender kid… Scheschonk believes that sensitive portraits of such individuals raise questions about identity and point to the relevant issues of our times: inclusion, equal rights, and transphobia. She lives with her son in Halle, Germany.

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