Swahili

Dieudo Hamadi was born in Kisangani (Democratic Republic of the Congo) in 1984, and studied medicine in 2005-2008. He then attended several documentary workshops. Hamadi is the author of two short documentaries, Ladies in Waiting and Zero Tolerance that caught the attention of festivals in Europe (Berlin, Paris, and Amsterdam) and North America (Toronto). Ladies In Waiting received the Pierre and Yolande Perrault scholarship at Cinema du Réel (Paris) in 2009. In 2013, Atalaku, his first feature-length documentary about the 2011 election campaign in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, won the Joris Ivens award for best first film, Best Foreign Film at the San Diego Black Film Festival (USA), the Jury Prize at FIDADOC (Agadir, Morocco) and three other awards. In 2014, National Diploma received both the International Prize of the SCAM and the Potemkin award at Cinéma du Réel (France), and was selected at TIFF (Toronto) and nearly 60 festivals worldwide. In 2015, Mama Colonel, his latest film, received assistance in post-production from the Sundance Institute and IDFA Bertha Fund.

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.