Aelrun Goette

at

Award-winning Filmmaker and Director

Aelrun Goette is an award-winning filmmaker: director, screenwriter and producer, whose bold work in cinema and television has redefined storytelling. Her films, spanning features, documentaries and acclaimed TV productions, have earned her top honors, including the German Film Award, two Grimme Awards, and the Grand Prix des Vision du Réel. She often focuses on marginalized individuals, especially women, using striking visuals to explore human depth. In 2023, she founded mandrake-pictures GmbH to advance her creative vision.

Born and raised in East Berlin, Goette studied philosophy before studying directing at Babelsberg Film School. Her student documentary, WITHOUT PAROLE, won the Robert Geisendörfer Prize, while her debut, THE CHILDREN ARE DEAD, earned the German Film Award for Best Documentary. Later works like UNDER THE ICE and A YEAR AFTER TOMORROW (2012 Günther Rohrbach Film Prize) further cemented her reputation.

Her most personal film, IN A LAND, THAT NO LONGER EXISTS, explores East Germany’s fashion scene and won the 2022 Günther Rohrbach Prize, with three German Film Award nominations. Currently, she’s developing PALUCCA 2.0, a modern take on dancer Gret Palucca’s life, a true-crime TV series set in a youth detention center, and Germany’s first podcast from inside a women’s prison.