National Competition for Women Directors of Photography

Bella Halben, after her training as an advertising photographer she worked as an assistant camerawoman, then as an operator for different DoPs. Since 2000 she works for movie productions. Among others she did set-photography for Nicolette Krebitz’ films Jeans and Das Herz ist ein dunkler Wald as well as for Hierankl (nominated for the German Camera Award), Winterreise (Director: Hans Steinbichler), Im Winter ein Jahr (Director: Caroline Link) and the Deutschland 09 episode Fraktur by Hans Steinbichler. Together with Tom Tykwer, she supervised the workshop ›One fine Day‹ for students of cinematography in East Africa.

Sophie Maintigneux has been active as a freelance cinematographer since 1984. She has worked with directors such as Eric Rohmer, Jean-Luc Godard, Michael Klier, Jan Schütte and Helga Reidemeister, and she has been director of photography on more than seventy fiction films and documentaries and has received numerous awards, including the German Camera Award for the documentary Ladies and Gentlemen over 65 and for Die dünnen Mädchen. In 2017, she received the The WIFTS Cinematographer Award. Her most recent works are the feature film Mario (directed by Marcel Gisler) and the documentary film outside directed by Johanna Sunder-Plassmann and Tama Tobias-Macht). Since 2011, she is Professor of Cinematography at the Cologne Academy of Media Arts.

Christiane Schmidt, 2014 prize winner for the documentary film The Forest Is Like the Mountains (Director: Christiane Schmidt and Didier Guillain), her graduate film at the University of Television and Film in Munich. Born 1978 in Lüneburg, she studied political science and art history at Oldenburg University. In 2013, she completed her studies in documentary film and television journalism, with a focus on cinematography, at the University of Television and Film in Munich. Christiane Schmidt lives in Berlin.