Anna Henckel-Donnersmarck

Anna Henckel-Donnersmarck has been curator and head of Berlinale Shorts, the competition for short films at the Berlinale since June 2019.

She works with the moving image in various ways. For 20 years, she has been active as a programmer (Filmwinter Stuttgart, Kasseler Dokfest, ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival, etc), moderator (Pictoplasma, Stuttgart International Festival of Animated Film, etc), jury member (Szpilman Award, REGARD Quebec, Tel Aviv Int. Student Film Festival, Filmfest Dresden, Fantoche – International Animation Film Festival, etc) and panel participant (Fajr Film Festival Tehran, Curtas Vila do Conde, etc). From 2007 to 2019, she served as a member of the selection committee for Berlinale Shorts.

Her primary focus is on the short film format.

In addition, she has conceived and realised video installations for exhibitions, stage works and concerts, for example for Deichtorhallen Hamburg, Hygiene Museum Dresden, GRIMMWELT Kassel, Humboldt Lab, Bauhaus Archive Berlin, Constanza Macras/DorkyPark, Mathilde Monnier, Schauspiel Köln, The Wooster Group NYC, the Berlin Philharmoniker and opera houses in Berlin, Frankfurt and Zürich.

She teaches film theory and video practice at various art schools.

Anna Henckel-Donnersmarck was born in Frankfurt/Main in 1973 and grew up in Indonesia, Japan, England and Bavaria. She studied at Camberwell College of Art and Design in London and received her degree from Film Academy Baden-Württemberg/Ludwigsburg, focussing on animation and documentary filmmaking.