Rosakinder

Rosakinder and Meine Väter

I met Rosa von Praunheim in 2005. First, I worked as his intern, then as his assistant director and editor, later as his artistic collaborator at film school, and finally, I became his friend, confidant, and colleague. For 20 years now, we have sought each other’s advice on both artistic and personal matters. To mark his 70th birthday, we decided to make a cinematic declaration of love for him, featuring directors that he had influenced as a mentor and father figure. It turned into a declaration of love for Rosa, this incredibly courageous, productive, and warm-hearted person whose art and activism have shaped German filmmaking for 60 years. And it also emerged as a film about filmmaking, featuring five directors who describe their own professional paths in a candid, open manner.

I realized once again how important Rosa was to me as a mentor when I contributed my short film Meine Väter to a European Covid compilation entitled Isolation. My father died at the age of 80, only a day before the first lockdown. Clearing out his room in Dresden, my sister and I discovered that he had hidden his homosexuality from us, and essentially, he had missed out on another possible life. He was almost the same age as Rosa von Praunheim. In close correspondence with Rosa, I processed this new insight into my own father cinematically.