Biography
Marie Wilke first worked as a projectionist and gathered first-hand experience as an assistant director and production assistant before she eventually enrolled at a film academy in Bozen, Italy, and later studied at the Universität der Künste (UdK) in Berlin, where Jutta Brückner, Heinz Emigholz and Harun Farocki were among her teachers.
During that time Wilke also moonlighted as a film critic, served as DoP on the documentary "Ad occhi chiusi" ("Mit geschlossenen Augen", IT 1998) and edited several docs and news features in Italy and Germany. From 1999 on, she made vido installations and directed her own documentaries while also teaching direction and editing. Her documentary "Con anima e corpo" ("Mit Leib und Seele”, IT 2000) screened at several international festivals, and in 2004, she became a creative assistant for doc filmmaking at the Hochschule für Film und Fernsehen "Konrad Wolf" in Potsdam-Babelsberg. One year later, she graduated from UDK with the documentary "Berlin Eins Dunkel".
In 2012, Marie Wilke began production on her third feature-length documentary "Staatsdiener", which portrays cadets at a police academy in Saxony-Anhalt. The film premiered at the 2015 Munich Film Festival and was released theatrically in Germany later that year.
At the Berlinale 2018, Marie Wilke presented her next documentary feature "Aggegrat", a film about the interaction of the public, the media and politics in the times of refugee crisis and right-wing populism. "Aggregat" was released in German cinemas in November 2018. In the same year, Wilke began working on a six-part documentary, "Höllental", that traces the events around the unresolved murder of Peggy Knobloch. "Höllental" was broadcast in early 2021.