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Pepe Danquart, born on March 1, 1955 in Singen/Hohentwiel, studied communication sciences in Freiburg im Breisgau from 1975 to 1981. After making his first Super 8 films as a teenager, in 1977 he was one of the founders of Medienwerkstatt Freiburg (MWF), a film collective that took a stand on social debates with radically political videos. Between 1978 and 1991, Danquart was involved in more than 30 documentaries as writer, director and producer within the MWF, such as "Passt bloß auf" (1980) and "Geisterfahrer - Eine utopische Kolportage" (1987), which won awards at international festivals. In 1982, Medienwerkstatt was honored for its overall output with the Documentary Film Prize of the German Film Critics.
In 1989, Pepe Danquart left the collective and in 1994, together with Mirjam Quinte, founded the production company quintefilm, with which he realized all his documentary projects until the early 2010s. With quitefilm, he and Quinte also co-produced several films by the Austrian filmmaker Michael Glawogger ("Workingman's Death," "Whore's Glory").
Danquart's big breakthrough came in 1994 with the short film "Schwarzfahrer," ("Black Rider") a humorous examination of everyday racism that won, among other awards, the Academy Award for Best Short Film. His subsequent documentary "Nach Saison" ("Off Season", 1997, co-directed with Mirjam Quinte) about the Bosnian war, was also an outstanding festival success and received, among others, the Peace Film Prize of the Berlinale and the Grand Prize of the San Francisco Film Festival. In 2000, he presented "Heimspiel" ("Home Game", 2000), his first feature-length documentary, in the Panorama section of the Berlinale. The film about the Berlin ice hockey cult team Eisbären was awarded, among others, the German Film Prize for Best Director. At the same time, "Heimspiel" was the first part of a trilogy of theatrically released sports documentaries that Danquart continued in 2004 with "Höllentour," ("Hell on Wheels") about the Tour de France, and in 2007 with "Am Limit," ("Two the Limit") about extreme climbers Thomas and Alexander Huber. Both films were highly praised, not least for their breathtaking images. At the Bavarian Film Awards 2007, "Am Limit" also won the prize for Best Documentary Film.
In addition to his documentary works, Danquart has also repeatedly directed music videos, commercials and feature films. For example, the television movie "Mörderinnen" (2002), the thriller "Semana Santa" ("Angel of Death", 2004), an international co-production starring Mira Sorvino and Olivier Martinez, and the crook comedy "Basta. Rotwein oder Totsein," ("C(r)ook") which brought together a large star ensemble including Henry Hübchen, Moritz Bleibtreu and Corinna Harfouch, but was not a great success with either critics or audiences.
At the beginning of 2008, Danquart founded the production company bittersuess pictures GmbH with Susa Kusche, Andrea Roman and Uwe Spiller, whose declared goal is to finance challenging but at the same time audience-pleasing feature films such as "Shahada" (2010). In the spring of 2011, after many years another political documentary by Pepe Danquart was released: "Joschka und Herr Fischer" combines a portrait of the popular Green Party politician with a review of five decades of German history and politics.
At the 2013 Cottbus Film Festival, Danquart presented his next feature film: "Lauf, Junge, lauf!" ("Run Boy Run", DE/FR), a film adaptation of the novel by Uri Orlev about the authentic story of Holocaust survivor Yoram Fridman. Lighter fare was "Auf der anderen Seite ist das Gras viel grüner" (2017), a romantic comedy about a woman caught between two men who gets the chance to rethink old decisions because of a time jump.
Danquart actually wanted to film Jörg Fauser's autobiographical novel "Rohstoff" afterwards. The screenplay (Stefan Weigl) was already finished, but due to persistent financing problems he finally realized another project: from the end of August to the beginning of October 2018 Danquart shot the documentary and travel film "Vor mir der Süden" ("Ahead of Me the South"). In it he follows the route of Pier Paolo Pasolini, who in the summer of 1959 traveled once all the way around the Italian boot for a magazine, a total of 3,000 kilometers. Originally planned for a theatrical release in summer 2020, the film was not released until summer 2021 due to the Corona pandemic.
Since April 2008, Pepe Danquart, who is one of the founding members of the German Film Academy, has been a university professor of film at the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg.