Maren Ade

Maren Ade, born in Karlsruhe back in ‘76, pretty much grew up surrounded by books and lesson plans—both her parents taught for a living. She ended up studying film in Munich at the Hochschule für Fernsehen und Film, which, let’s face it, is basically Germany’s Hogwarts for filmmakers. Around 2001, she and Janine Jackowski (another HFF grad) decided to just go for it and launched Komplizen, their own production company. That move turned out to be a game-changer; Komplizen later had its hands in stuff like La Gomera De Apu, Spencer, About Dry Grasses, and Maria. Ade didn’t waste much time after film school. She kicked things off with a couple of shorts, but her big splash came with Der Wald vor lauter Bäumen in 2003, a brutally honest story about a rookie teacher struggling to find her footing. Fun fact: all the school scenes? Shot in the very place her mom worked. That film earned her some serious cred for its raw vibe and authenticity. Fast forward six years, and she cranks out Everyone Else, swapping out classrooms for the sunny chaos of the Sardinian coast. That one’s all about tangled relationships and emotional messes, and it’s got this tense, almost Polanski-like feel. But then, boom—Toni Erdmann hits in 2016, and suddenly everyone’s talking about her. It’s a wild, hilarious, deeply weird father-daughter comedy that Cannes couldn’t get enough of, and it raked in cash at art house theaters everywhere. Three features in, and Maren Ade isn’t just another director—she’s pretty much a staple of modern German cinema.