PARTICIPANTS

SIMONE BAUMANN
Managing Director German Films

Simone Baumann is working in the film production for more as 25 years and has produced many documentaries and feature films.  Till March 2019 she was the head of the documentary department of Saxonia Entertainment GmbH. From 1997-2010, she was managing director of the independent production company LE VISION. She is an experienced co-producer, and one of Europe’s leading experts on Russia, the former Eastern bloc, and their audiovisual markets.

In April 2019 Simone Baumann was appointed as the Managing Director of German Films – the German film promotion. She has been working as the GERMAN FILMS Eastern Europe representative since 2005. She also supervised numerous feature film productions in the former Soviet Union as an executive producer and consultant.

Sonja Heinen
Managing Director of European Film Promotion (EFP), a pan-European network dedicated to the promotion of European movies worldwide.

As Head of the Berlinale Co-Production Market for the twelve years and Project Manager of the Berlin-based World Cinema Fund (2003-2016), she has been a driving force behind the international co-productions of films and funding films from developing countries. Before joining the Berlinale, she worked as a producer and project coordinator for Gemini Film and International West in Cologne. She started out at the Filmstiftung NRW in Düsseldorf, where she became Assistant to Executive Director Dieter Kosslick and especially responsible for international contacts, organizing the Co-Production Meetings and developing the International Co-Production Market Cologne.

Victoria Leshchenko

I am a dreamer, maker and connector. I have 11 years of experience in project  and team management, creating and managing cultural events. My background is Kyiv-Mohyla education, cultural studies. The world of film festivals began for me with “Molodist”. I worked here from 2007 to 2011, working as a editor in chief, production manager, and later coordinator of film programs. In 2010 I joined the team of Docudays UA International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival, where I was promoted to program director in 2019. Areas of current interest: documentary, psychology and psychotherapy, online education, sports, delicious food, and I love growing cactuses.

Zeynep Güzel

Zeynep Güzel managed Turkey’s first private documentary fund the Yeni Film Fund and programmed the industry workshop series in the scope !f Istanbul Independent Film Festival between 2015 and 2019. Her debut documentary ‘Come Rain or Shine’ premiered in 2019 at the 38th Istanbul Film Festival’s national documentary competition. She conducts workshops, consultation and training on storytelling, international grant writing and funding strategies at the various platforms such as the Toolbox program of Berlinale EFM, DOK Leipzig Industry and Meetings on the Bridge. She has been a senior consultant at the Documentary Association of Europe (DAE) since its foundation. She works on her first narrative feature film called ‘When the Sun Comes Out’ and is a fellow of the 2021 Berlin Artist in Residency Programme (AiR) in collaboration with Medienboard Berlin Brandenburg and Meetings on the Bridge.

Heino Deckert

Heino studied law and subsequently graduated from the Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie Berlin (DFFB). He founded Ma.ja.de. Filmproduktions GmbH in 1991. Since 2003, he has been managing director of his own world distribution company for documentary films, Deckert Distribution. He is also a partner in Blinker Filmproduktion in Cologne and the world distribution company Pluto Films.

Heino has produced over 120 films to date with filmmakers like Sergei Loznitsa, Victor Kossakovsky, Ai Weiwei and Thomas Heise.

In 2018 he premiered two films in Cannes, DONBASS by Sergei Loznitsa and his co-production CHRIS THE SWISS by Anja Kofmel. In the same year, ADAM & EVELYN by Andreas Goldstein and AQUARELA by Victor Kossakovsky both premiered in Venice. In 2019 the successful festival tour of Thomas Heise’s HEIMAT IS A SPACE IN TIME commenced with the Caligari Prize of the Berlinale. The film was also nominated for the German Film Award 2020. Ma.ja.de.’s co-production THE CAVE by Feras Fayyad got a nomination for an Oscar® in 2020. In 2021 Invisible Demonds by Rahul Jain premiered in Cannes.

Heino is a member of the German and European Film Academy and a member of Ampas.