I developed my love for filmmaking while growing up with my family working in theater in Paris and Berlin. My parents divorced when I was 4 years old, but they did the best they could to keep me out of it. Well, that went well! When I dropped out of school and told them I would be moving to Vienna, we had diner at our favorite spot in Belleville. There they started having an argument: my mom accusing him for being a Capricorn and my dad yelling back at her for being a crazy esoteric . It spiraled out of control.

 

 

Silence was my way trying to cope with the situation- this was supposed a nice goodbye evening. Then: they finally stoped arguing and asked if I was ok. Are you kidding me? Why does this have to happen the night before my big move?  They started laughing and explained: because I never actively saw them fight, they thought they owe me the experience and pretended to fight…The lesson being “directing starts by directing your own life”- and as they say this, they gave me their old wedding rings : melted into one.

 

I only understood the meaning of it after I graduated from the Academy of Film in Vienna, where Michael Haneke taught. Uncertainty and Duality are themes that I’ve carried my entire life. Where the European in me feels the weight, the American says: there’s an opportunity! Both had their reasons to fall in love and fall out of it again. A tragedy at the age of 4 ended in surprise joke at 18 – This perceptions has not only become a fundamental element in my stories, linking oppositions and adding twists, but it also is the driving force why I need to solve problems when opposing forces start becoming destructive.

 

Since then I moved to New York City, started with ten bucks an hour at an indie‑distribution house, got to assist on Documentaries, personally interviewed the Coppola’s (Father and Daughter), Camera Operated for the World Economic Forum, stemmed one of Uwe Boll’s productions as an AD and even had the closing words in Martin Scorsese’s Silence. … but I never let directing drift off my radar—whether it was shorts, music videos, or ads—and the grind paid off: a client hired me for the short The Dutchman’s Pipe and then bankrolled my debut feature, The Obelisk coming out this year.