Valeska Grisebach

Biography

Valeska Grisebach was born in Bremen on 4 January 1968 and grew up in Berlin. She first studied philosophy and literature in Berlin, Munich and Vienna before enrolling in the directing program at the Vienna Film Academy in 1993, where her teachers included Peter Patzak, Wolfgang Glück and Michael Haneke. Her graduation film "Mein Stern" ("Be My Star," 2001), a quiet love story about two 15-year-olds, won the FIPRESCI Prize at the Toronto International Film Festival and took the top prize for Best Film at the Turin Film Festival. In Germany, the film earned Grisebach the First Steps Award, a prize for outstanding graduation films from German-speaking film schools, as well as a nomination for the Grimme-Preis, Germany's most prestigious television award. 

Grisebach's second film, "Sehnsucht" ("Longing," 2004–2006), a relationship drama cast largely with non-professional actors, was also a major success with critics and on the festival circuit. It premiered in competition at the 2006 Berlinale and went on to screen at numerous other festivals. It won the Special Jury Award in Buenos Aires, the Grand Prix Asturias at the Gijón International Film Festival, and a special prize in the New Films, New Directors section of the Warsaw International Film Festival. At the Festival des deutschen Films in Ludwigshafen, an annual festival dedicated to German cinema, "Sehnsucht" received the Filmkunstpreis (Film Art Award). 

In 2007, Grisebach made the documentary video "Narben" for the Berlin exhibition "Schmerz" ("Pain"), a joint project of the Berlin Museum of Medical History and the Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin's museum of contemporary art. In the film, people talk about their scars, whether unwanted or self-chosen, and the memories of pain attached to them. In the years that followed, Grisebach taught at the German Film and Television Academy Berlin (dffb) and worked as a script consultant on "La Lisière - Am Waldrand" ("The Edge," FR/DE 2010), "Die Ausbildung" ("The Education," 2011) and Maren Ade's multi-award-winning "Toni Erdmann" (2016). 

Between July and September 2015, Grisebach finally shot her third feature film, "Western" (DE/BG/AT/MC), a close observation of the escalating rivalry between a group of German construction workers and the residents of a Bulgarian village. Almost two years later, "Western" premiered in the Un Certain Regard section of the 2017 Cannes Film Festival, followed by further festival screenings. The film opened in German cinemas in August 2017. Shortly afterwards it received the Filmkunstpreis at the Festival des deutschen Films in Ludwigshafen (shared with "Casting"), and in February 2018 it won the German Film Critics' Award for Best Feature Film of 2017, along with the award for its lead actor, Meinhard Neumann. At the German Film Awards, the country's leading film honor, Grisebach was nominated for Best Director, and the film received the bronze award in the Best Feature Film category. 

At the 2018 Deutscher Regiepreis Metropolis, the award presented by the German Directors Guild, Grisebach was nominated for Best Director (Feature Film). Numerous further festival awards followed around the world. 

Over the next few years, Grisebach contributed to films by other directors: as editor of Sara Summa's Italian village study "Gli ultimi a vederli vivere" ("The Last to See Them," 2019), and as a consultant on Emerson Culurgioni and Stefanie Schroeder's documentary "La Duna" (2024), which was made over a period of five years. 

In August 2024, Valeska Grisebach began shooting her next feature, "Das geträumte Abenteuer" ("The Dreamed Adventure," DE/BE/AT 2026), about an archaeologist in the border region between Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey who finds herself confronted with human fates, criminal networks and suppressed memories. The film won the Jury Prize in competition at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival and was released in German cinemas in September of the same year.