06/02/2024 - As part of the current campaign, seven up-and-coming talents from the German film industry will be introduced during the Berlinale

The participants in this year's Face to Face campaign (© German Films)

The film promotion agency German Films has, since 2016, used its Face to Face campaign to highlight the national industry's most promising talents. A new batch of seven such individuals will be presented to the international public during the imminent Berlinale (15-25 February). This setting will allow the German filmmakers to take full advantage of a prestigious platform that will allow them plenty of visibility. The talents are set to be introduced to the international film industry during a panel event, where they will be able to network and meet colleagues from all around the world.

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This year's selection gathers directors, scriptwriters, actors and a production designer. “They stand for the excellent reputation that German film and series productions enjoy internationally,” says Simone Baumann, managing director of German Films. “They have already left a lasting mark on the German film industry with their creativity, skill, professionalism, and love and enthusiasm for filmmaking,” she continues. “It is particularly important for us to show that the film industry is incredibly diverse and that we have fantastic talents in a wide variety of trades here in Germany. We are proud to present seven filmmakers as ambassadors for our campaign this year, whose diverse CVs and professional backgrounds symbolise creativity in the industry.”

The participants include actor Jan Bülow, who was classically trained at the Hans Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts before starting his career on the big screen. He appeared recently in The Universal Theory [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Timm Kröger
film profile] by Timm Kröger and is filming the series Kafka by David Schalko. Next up is writer-director Mehmet Akif Büyükatalay, whose Turkish roots have been one of the sources of inspiration for his films since his graduation piece, Oray [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Mehmet Akif Büyükatalay
film profile], in 2019. This movie was followed by his writing and producing credit on Cem Kaya’s widely acclaimed documentary Love, Deutschmarks and Death [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Cem Kaya
film profile]. Büyükatalay also founded the production company filmfaust with Claus Reichel, and he is directing and producing his upcoming project Hysteria, for which he also wrote the script (see the news). Actress Banafshe Hourmazdi, meanwhile, attracted international attention with her performance in No Hard Feelings [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Faraz Shariat
film profile] by Faraz Shariat, and has since been seen in numerous TV productions and features, such as Cocoon [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] by Leonie Krippendorff and Turning Tables by Angelina Maccarone. She will next grace screens in Burhan Qurbani's new film, No Beast So Fierce, which will be released later this year.

Writer-director Moritz Müller-Preißer, who received many awards and was a finalist for a nomination for the Student Oscars with his short documentary Haeberli, is now adapting the short into a feature-length documentary, besides working on several other features, such as the documentary God's Other Plan. Production designer Mona Cathleen Otterbach, who worked on the features Sweet Disaster by Laura Lehmus and Franky Five Star [+see also:
film review
interview: Birgit Möller
film profile] by Birgit Möller, for which she earned a Special Award for Best Production Design at the Filmz Festival in Mainz, also recently collaborated with Sophia Bösch on Milk Teeth [+see also:
film review
interview: Mona Cathleen Otterbach
interview: Sophia Bösch
film profile], which has just premiered at IFFR.

Berlin-based writer-director Eva Trobisch enjoyed great success with her first feature, All Good [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], which had its international premiere at Locarno, where it won the Award for Best First Feature. Later, it also received the German Film Critics’ Award and the Women in Motion Award at Cannes. Trobisch's newest feature Ivo [+see also:
film review
interview: Eva Trobisch, Adrian Campean
film profile] will premiere at the Berlinale, in the Encounters section. Finally, writer-director Soleen Yusef, who presented her first feature and graduation project, House Without Roof [+see also:
trailer
film profile], in 2015, has since directed several national and international series, such as Skylines for Netflix (see the news) and Deutschland 89 for Amazon Prime. Yusef is preparing her first children's movie, Winners [+see also:
interview: Soleen Yusef
film profile], to be released in March of this year.

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