Mentors

Foto: Superbass CC BY-SA 4.0

Marvin Kren

Born 1980. Studied directing at the Hamburg Media School. His thesis film, SCHAUTAG, received the Filmfestival Max Ophüls Preis in 2009. He followed it up with the horror film RAMMBOCK: BERLIN UNDEAD in 2010, for which he received the Vienna Film Prize at the Viennale film festival, among other awards. BLOOD GLACIER had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2012. After four episodes of the German series TATORT and the thriller BERLIN ONE, he served as a director on the TV series 4 BLOCKS, for which he won the Grimme-Preis and the Deutscher Fernsehpreis. He then created the Netflix/ORF coproduction FREUD and the comedy THE WHITE GOBLIN. Currently, he is the showrunner, writer, and director of the Netflix gangster series CRIMINEL.

Fotos: Felix Vratny

Lola Basara und Peter Hengl

Lola Basara and Peter Hengl have been a filmmaking duo for over a decade (Peter writing/directing and Lola producing). They started collaborating as students at the Vienna Film Academy. Since 2021, they’ve been running the production company Capra Film, which aims to make sophisticated genre features with an Austrian identity for a national and international audience.

The first feature their company produced was the horror movie FAMILY DINNER, written and directed by Peter and produced by Lola. It premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2022 and was subsequently screened at more than thirty film festivals, including BIFAN, Fantastic Fest, Fright Fest, and Sitges. It had its Austrian premiere at Viennale in 2022 and opened nationwide on January 27, 2023.

The duo participated in several international networking workshops, such as the European Genre Forum for emerging genre filmmakers. They have been jurors at various film festivals.

They are currently working on several joint projects, including as cowriters, but they also develop projects with other filmmakers.

Foto: Klaus Pichler

Veronika Franz & Severin Fiala

Veronika Franz, born 1965 in Vienna, studied German and philosophy. Starting out as a film journalist at the Viennese daily Kurier, she has been an artistic collaborator of filmmaker Ulrich Seidl since 1997. She has been cowriting the screenplays for all his films since, including DOG DAYS (2001), IMPORT/EXPORT (2007), the PARADISE trilogy (2012–13), and BÖSE SPIELE (in production). In 2003, she and Seidl founded the company Ulrich Seidl Filmproduktion.

Severin Fiala, born 1985 in Horn, studied at the Vienna Film Academy. He works at the Red Cross and had his first success with the award-winning short ELEPHANT SKIN (2009, codirected by Ulrike Putzer).