About Jan

I’m interested in people who cannot be reduced to a simple story. Contradictions are part of being human, and good documentaries don’t have to resolve them. They can leave questions open, challenge assumptions and trust audiences to make up their own minds. The world is rarely black and white. I’m interested in the shades of grey in between.

As a documentary filmmaker, writer and director, I tell stories about people and the societies they live in. Individual lives often lead to bigger questions about identity and belonging, history and memory, power, freedom and responsibility. At the heart of my films are people themselves, with all their convictions, doubts, struggles and contradictions. They are not there to illustrate a predetermined argument, but to be seen and understood in all their complexity.

My films take me into very different worlds. I’ve followed elderly athletes on their way to a world championship, explored the history of the computer revolution, portrayed Jewish twins on their lifelong search for identity, and examined Germany’s love affair with the automobile. More recently, I’ve focused increasingly on political and social conflicts, particularly in the United States. What connects these films is a desire to look beyond the surface and take people seriously in all their complexity.

My work combines intimate observation with social analysis, historical research with contemporary perspectives, and journalistic rigour with a distinctive cinematic approach. Rather than offering audiences ready-made answers, I aim to bring different perspectives to life and leave room for viewers to form their own judgments.

My films have been broadcast by ARD, ZDF, ARTE, 3sat, BBC Two, YLE, VPRO and NHK, among others, and released on platforms including Netflix and Amazon Prime Video.

My first feature-length documentary, AUTUMN GOLD (HERBSTGOLD), received several international awards in 2010, including the Filmmakers Award at Hot Docs in Toronto and the Youth Jury Award at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA). MY WAR WITHIN (DER KRIEG IN MIR), a documentary about the long-term effects of war trauma, received the Science Journalism Award from the German Society for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy. THE SILICON VALLEY REVOLUTION won the Audience Award for Best Documentary Feature at the Berlin & Beyond Film Festival in San Francisco and was included in the German weekly newspaper DIE ZEIT’s “100 Masterpieces” canon of knowledge.

Born in Essen, Germany, I live and work in Berlin. I studied social sciences at Ruhr University Bochum and Humboldt University of Berlin, as well as journalism at Freie Universität Berlin. From 1998 to 2001, I worked in London as a correspondent and editorial director for APM Media. In 1999, I received a RIAS media fellowship to study at the DeWitt Wallace Center for Communication and Journalism at Duke University in North Carolina. In 2007, I participated in the Documentary Campus Masterschool.

Alongside my own filmmaking, I’m involved in supporting and developing documentary television. I have served on the juries of the German Camera Award and the Sehsüchte Film Festival at the Film University Babelsberg. I also chair the Documentary Film Section of the German Television Academy (DAFF).

You can find a selection of my films in the filmography.

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