Tommy Kommer

Tommy Kommer has been Director of Finance and Business Operations of the Berlinale since June 2024.

He joins the Berlinale team and returns to Berlin from Austin, Texas, where he has worked and lived with his family for the last couple of years. He is a German citizen and has residency in the United States.

Before he moved to Texas, he was actively involved in Berlin’s cultural scene and served as the elected Vice-Chairman of the Board of the Friends of the Deutsches Theater (DT Freunde) for more than a decade.

He studied political science and economics at Stanford University and the Free University of Berlin where he wrote his master’s thesis about the privatisation of the DEFA (Studio Babelsberg). He also holds an MBA from UCLA Anderson where he specialized in finance and strategy. While at UCLA, he took UCLA Film School classes taught by Hollywood greats Peter Guber, Peter Bart, and Tom Sherak.

For most of his professional career, he worked in the music industry (e.g., for Capitol Records and Universal Music Publishing). He also served as Director Corporate Finance & M&A for Metzler Bank, Germany’s oldest private bank still owned by the founder‘s family. In total, he has more than 15 years of international senior corporate finance and advisory experience in a variety of industries.