Jo Müller was born and raised in Essen, and graduated from Gymnasium Essen-Werden in 2011. His first experiences in visual media were gathered through his internships with a photography studio and television production company. In 2012 he did a voluntary year of social work, living and working in the Dominican Republic, and upon his return to Germany, took up studies in cinematography at ifs international filmschule köln. Müller graduated with a Bachelor of Arts specialized in Visual Arts. His first short films, Sockenwäsche (2014, 5’) and Update Required (2016, 3’), animated films, allowed him to try out the roles of writer and director. His first feature-length film, Aislado (82’), completed in 2016, is a documentary film he spent three months filming in the Dominican Republic. He has worked at bildundtonfabrik (btf) in Cologne since September 2016.

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.