Director and producer Marcin Wierzchowski was born in Warsaw in 1984. His parents fled Poland and emigrated to Germany due to the civil-war like conditions in Poland; Marcin was still so little he fit in his mother’s handbag. Wierzchowski quit school at 17, when he began working in a video store, watching innumerable movies and decided to be a director. He went back to school to get his Abitur in 2012 and then began studying philosophy in Frankfurt am Main. In 2013 he moved to the Kunsthochschule Mainz to study fine arts with a focus on film under Professor Harald Schleicher. He now lives and works in Frankfurt am Main and Warsaw. His debut film, the 47-minute documentary HANAU – EINE NACHT UND IHRE FOLGEN (“HANAU – A NIGHT AND ITS AFTERMATH”), won the Grimme Award and is the basis for his 2025 feature film DAS DEUTSCHE VOLK (“THE GERMAN PEOPLE”), which will premiere at the 2025 Berlinale. The Film- und Medienstiftung NRW awarded him a Gerd Ruge Grant for production of his documentary film project TRAUMALAND (“TRAUMA LAND”). He is a director, author, video artist, set designer, producer and is currently working on his first works of fiction while continuing to make documentary films.