Gallery
All Pictures (4)Biography
Philip Scheffner was born in Homburg/Saar on 28 May 1966 and lives in Berlin since 1986. From 1991 to 1999 he was a member of the Berlin writers group and production company "dogfilm". 2001 he founded the media platform and production company "pong" with Merle Kröger and worked since then with experimental music/art of sound. 2007 he made his first long film "The Halfmoon Files", the experimental research on the phonographic recordings of an indian prisoner of war of 1916.
His documentary "Der Tag des Spatzen" premiered in the Forum section of the 2010 IFF Berlin: the film juxtaposes ornithological observations with footage of war scenarios and army training terrains – places which have become breeding grounds for birds. "Revision", Scheffner's next film, premiered at the 2012 IFF Berlin: the documentary investigates the court case following the death of two men who were shot near the Polish-German boarder in 1992. The film was released in Germany on September 2012.
At the Filmfest München, "Revision" garnered him the Fritz Gerlich Preis and at the Wiesbaden film festival goEast it won the documentary film award. In September 2012, the film opened in German movie theaters. The next year saw "Revision" win another award: at the festival Film+ the jury chose Scheffner for Best Editing. 4 years later, the Berlin IFF 2016 selected two Scheffner documentaries to premiere in the Forum section: "And-Ek Ghes…" (2016) portrayed a Roma family moving from Romania to Berlin.
For the experimental documentary "Havarie" (2016) he took a three-minute YouTube video that was shot by passengers on a cruise who filmed a boat of refugees on the open sea and stretched it to a 90 minute film. The film which was created and which premiered at the height of the so-called "refugee crisis" caused a stir at the Berlin IFF and was very well received by critics, winning the ARTE-Dokumentarfilmpreis at Duisburger Filmwoche 2016 for example. In January 2017, "Havarie" had its regular start in German theaters. At the German Film Critics' Award, "Havarie" won Best Experimental Film in early 2017; "And-Ek Ghes..." was nominated for Best Documentary.
Parallel to his own films, Scheffner worked as producer and dramatic advisor on the documentary "A House in Ninh Hoa" (2016). As an editor, he was involved in Alex Gerbaulet's short feature film "Die Schläferin" (The Sleeper", 2018) and Amel Alzakout and Khaled Abdulwahed's documentary "Purple Sea" (2020), which also dealt with the hardship and helplessness of refugees.
In 2019, Scheffner began work on his first feature film: "Europe" is based on the experiences of Rhim Ibrir, an Algerian woman living in France who already worked on "Havarie" and plays a fictional version of herself in "Europe." The film premiered at the Berlinale 2022 Forum and opened in theaters in March 2022.
In addition to his practical film work, Philip Scheffner became a professor in the subject group Film/Television at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne in the winter semester 2021/2022; his focus is on the topic Documentary Practices - Narrative/Mixed Forms.