MR. BACHMANN AND HIS CLASS

Maria Speth is a writer, director, and producer of features and documentaries. Her graduate thesis film and debut feature The Days Between premiered at the Rotterdam IFF in 2001, where it won the VPRO Tiger Award. It was also honored with the Grand Jury Award at the Créteil International Women’s FF and the MFG-Star Award for emerging directors in Germany in 2001. Her second feature, Madonnas, (2007) won the Hessian Film Prize in 2007. The lead actress Sandra Hüller won the Silver Astor Award for Best Actress at the Festival Internacional de Cine in Mar del Plata. In 2009, Maria Speth founded Madonnen Film and produced her first documentary, 9 Lives, which she wrote, directed, and edited, and for which she received the DEFA Foundation Award at the 2010 International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film. In 2011, she was awarded the Incentive Prize for Film and Media Arts from the Academy of Arts in Berlin. In 2012, Maria received the German Metropolis Award as Best Director of a documentary. Her feature Daughters (2014) premiered at the Berlinale and was released theatrically in Germany. In 2015, Maria received script development funding from the German National FilmFund FFA for her project Stadt Allen Dorf that she shot as Mr. Bachman and His Class.