Jonas Dornbach

Jonas Dornbach’s story has this low-key international vibe going on—born and raised in Perugia, Italy, but his real cinematic journey kicked off in Germany. After high school, he bounced around on different film gigs before finally landing something solid at Kinoherz in 2000. Not just a desk job, either—by 2002, he was running the whole show as CEO in Berlin. The guy doesn’t mess around. He wrapped up his studies at the German Film and Television Academy Berlin (dffb) in 2006, finishing with a flick called “On the safe side?” That one, directed by David Dietl, didn’t just fade into the student film void—it snagged the Studio Hamburg Award for Best Feature Film in 2008. Not too shabby. He also did the EAVE training for European producers (Media Programme) in 2007, which probably explains how he ended up as line producer on Maren Ade’s “Everyone Else”—big deal in the indie scene. Since 2010, Dornbach’s been a driving force at Komplizen Film. He upped the ante in 2014, becoming both a shareholder and managing director. He’s worked with a pretty wild list of directors: Maren Ade, Benjamin Heisenberg, Sonja Heiss, Vanessa Jopp, Valeska Grisebach, Miguel Gomes, Barbara Albert, Jasmila Zbanic, Marc Rothemund, Sebastian Lelio, Hans Weingartner—the lineup reads like a European arthouse playlist. Dornbach’s also wired in with the International Producer Networks ACE and EAVE, so he’s not just producing, he’s plugged deep into the pulse of European cinema.