Ausztria

Ruth Beckermann is a filmmaker and writer was born in Vienna, Austria. Her film Those Who Go Those Who Stay won Best Documentary at the 2014 Diagonale in Graz. Two years later, The Dreamed Ones won Best Feature Film at the same festival. The Waldheim Waltz received several prizes including the Glashütte Original – Documentary Award at the 2018 Berlinale and was also nominated as Austria’s entry for the Oscars. In 2022, Mutzenbacher screened in the Encounters section of the Berlinale where it won the award for Best Film.

Director, producer, writer and cinematographer, Nikolaus Geyrhalter was born in Vienna, Austria in 1972. Geyrhalter's static-camera, well-paced observational films tackle their subjects head-on, whether it's exploring the terrain in Chernobyl, Ukraine (Pripyat), tracing the route of the Dakar Rally (7915 Km), or investigating the production of processed foods (Our Daily Bread). At the age of 22, Geyrhalter started his own production company, Nikolaus Geyrhalter Filmproduktion (NGF). Geyrhalter examined night labor in Europe with Abendland (2011) and landscapes of urban decay across the world in Homo Sapiens (2016). The latter film played at the Berlinale Forum, the Hong Kong International Film Festival, the Cinéma du Réel Festival, the Edinburgh International Film Festival, Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, and the Viennale. In 2015, Berlin's Arsenal Cinema programmed a retrospective dedicated to his work. The 38th Cinéma du Réel Festival programmed a sidebar on his documentaries. Geyrhalter's films have also screened at the Museum of Modern Art's Doc Fortnight.

Jan-Christoph Gockel, born in 1982, grew up near Kaiserslautern. He studied theatre, film, and media studies in Frankfurt/Main, and directing at the Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts in Berlin. He has worked as a freelance director since 2007. His productions usually focus on political issues. Since 2013, Gockel has been intensely engaged with Africa, and the relationship between Europe and former colonies, the effects of colonialism, and economic dependency have become the themes of Congo-Müller, Heart of Darkness, The Mission: Danton’s Death and Coltan Fever. His works have been nominated for the Nestroy Theatre Award (2010, 2016, 2017), which he won in 2017 for The Mission: Danton’s Death. The Revolution Devours Its Children! is his first feature-length film.