Mini biography

Andreas Dresen _{(August 16, 1963, Gera, Germany)}

Andreas Dresen (born August 16, 1963 in Gera) is a German film director. From 2012 to 2022 he was a lay judge at the Constitutional Court of the State of Brandenburg.

Andreas Dresen is the son of the theater director Adolf Dresen and the actress Barbara Bachmann. After his parents separated, the theater director Christoph Schroth became his foster father.

Since 1996, Dresen has also worked on the stage, for example at the Cottbus State Theater (Goethe's Urfaust), at the Schauspiel Leipzig and at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin. In 2006 he directed Mozart's Don Giovanni at the Basel Opera and Ödön von Horváth's play Kasimir and Karoline with the music of the 17 Hippies at the German Theater in Berlin.

“People have a justified interest in stories that take place on their own doorsteps. Sometimes a journey into one’s own living room can be more exciting than one to a far-off galaxy.”

In 2013 he was appointed to the competition jury at the 63rd Berlin International Film Festival. In 2015, Dresen was represented in the Berlinale competition for the third time with his film When We Dreamed, after 1999 (Night Figures) and 2002 (Half Staircase). In 2016, Dresen had a guest appearance on the WDR program Room Free! with Christine Westermann and Götz Alsmann. The protagonist of this episode is Axel Prahl.

In 2018, Dresen's feature film Gundermann was released in cinemas, which won a total of six Lolas at the 2019 German Film Prize, including the award for Best Film. Dresen had been trying for twelve years to realize this bio-pic about the East German singer-songwriter Gerhard Gundermann. Together with the main actor Alexander Scheer and Pankow guitarist Jürgen Ehle, Andreas Dresen plays in a band that was originally founded for the film premieres and which, among other things, well-known songs by Gerhard Gundermann, David Bowie and Rio Reiser.

In 2022 he received an invitation to compete at the 72nd Berlinale for his feature film Rabiye Kurnaz against George W. Bush.

This was followed by the historical drama In Love, Your Hilde (2024), which is about the resistance fighter Hilde Coppi. This earned him an invitation to the main competition at the 74th Berlinale. Dresen is also set to remake The Christmas Goose Auguste.
Commitments and memberships

Andreas Dresen was one of the founding members of the German Film Academy in 2003. He is also a member of the European Film Academy and the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Arts. Dresen also held the position of Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the DEFA Foundation from 2013 to 2019.

In October 2012, at the suggestion of the Die Linke parliamentary group, he was elected as a constitutional judge in the state of Brandenburg as a legal layman. In November 2012 he agreed to the election. His official term of office ended after 10 years in November 2022. He then continued to hold office at the request of the President of the State Constitutional Court, Markus Möller, until a successor, Andreas Koch, was elected in October 2023.

Since 2016, Andreas Dresen has supported the “Alliance for Brandenburg”, an initiative of the state of Brandenburg that aims to ensure that the integration of refugees is successful.

Since the summer semester of 2018, he has held the newly established professorship for film acting at the Rostock University of Music and Theater.

He was the first signatory of the open letter to the Bundeskan published in the magazine Emma.

He was the first signatory of the open letter to Chancellor Scholz dated April 29, 2022, published in the magazine Emma, which speaks out against arms deliveries to Ukraine after the Russian attack on Ukraine.

At the end of June 2023, Dresen became a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Dresen lives in Potsdam.

Filmography

Feature films

     1990: To Istanbul as quickly as possible
     1992: Silent Land
     1994: The other life of Mr. Kreins
     1995: My unknown husband
     1997: Police call 110: The exchange
     1997: Get out of your skin
     1999: Night Creatures
     2000: The policewoman
     2002: Half Staircase
     2005: Willenbrock (based on the novel of the same name by Christoph Hein)
     2005: Summer in front of the balcony
     2008: Cloud 9
     2009: Whiskey with vodka
     2011: Stop on the open road
     2015: When we dreamed
     2017: Timm Thaler or the sold laughter
     2018: Gundermann
     2022: Rabiye Kurnaz vs. George W. Bush
     2023: From Hilde with Love | In Liebe, Eure Hilde

Documentaries

1989: Beyond Klein Wanzleben
1990: Zimbabwe - Dreams of the future
1993: Krause's pub
1994: Cuckoo Children
2003: I think of Germany… – Mr. Wichmann from the CDU
2010: 20 × Brandenburg - people, places, stories
2012: Mr. Wichmann from the third row
2013: 16 × Germany – people, places, stories

Director - Selected filmography

1. From Hilde with Love | In Liebe, Eure Hilde (2024)