Germany

1917 - The Real October

Aislado

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.

Zoltan M. Geller was born 1991 in Sombor (Serbia), but was raised in the beautiful provinces of Southern Germany. After his high school graduation he voluntarily served in the civilian service for six months at a school for disabled children. After an internship as an assistant cameraman at a Munich-based production company he started an internship in the editing department, where he discovered his dedication to film editing. In 2012 he attended the study program, “Editing Picture And Sound“, at ifs international film school in Cologne, and graduated with a BA in 2016. Since 2016, he has worked as a freelance film editor and member of the German film editors association BFS.

No Country for the Poor

László Bihari has designed online campaign videos for non-profit organizations for the past nine years. He is one of the founders of the creative team, ZPOK. This is their first documentary film production.

LEAVE/STAY: Sweet Home

Loránd Balázs Imre is a co-founder of SpeakEasy Project, and founder of SpeakEasy Project Berlin. He has worked on a number of documentary films since 2012, and is the director and producer of the Erasmus EuroMedia Awarded documentary series, LEAVE/STAY.

Bálint Tusor began his film career in 2003, and has since worked on numerous international productions as assistant editor. He completed his Masters in film and television at the National Film and Television School in 2012, and in the last five years has mainly worked as a documentary film editor. Verzio will screen his first documentary directorial debut, co-directed with Loránd Balazs Imre.

See You in Chechnya

Alexander Kvatashidze was born in 1977 in Tbilisi, Georgia. In 1996 he graduated from Nikoladze Art College with a qualification as a sculptor. In 2001 he earned his BA degree in Art and Humanities at Tbilisi State University. In 2005-2006, Kvatashidze studied at the film department of California State University in San Jose. Since 2006 Alexander has worked as a director, DoP or producer on various projects, most of which were documentaries. He founded Lokokina Studio in 2009.

Pre-Crime

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.

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