Biography
Stefan Sick was born in 1981 in Buxtehude, Germany. From 2003 to 2006, he trained as a media designer for image and sound at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz. During this time, he directed several short films and also worked as a cinematographer and editor on films by fellow students.
In 2010, Sick began studying cinematography at the Film Academy Baden-Württemberg, one of Germany's leading film schools. For his camera work on the student documentary film "nebel" ("Fog," 2014), directed by Nicole Vögele, he received the award for Best Cinematography at Sehsüchte, an international student film festival held in Potsdam-Babelsberg. Until graduating, he worked as a cinematographer on many student films as well as on commercials, television reports (including "37° Grad," a well-known German documentary TV series), and medium-length documentary films.
His diploma film as cinematographer, "Closing Time" (CH/DE 2018), was again directed by Nicole Vögele. The documentary portrait of a night snack bar in Taipei, Taiwan, premiered at the Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland, one of Europe's major international film festivals, in the section Cineasti del presente, which focuses on emerging filmmakers. The film received a Special Jury Prize.
With "Das innere Leuchten" ("The Inner Light," 2019), a film about everyday life in a care facility for people with dementia, Stefan Sick made his first feature-length documentary as a director. He was also responsible for the concept, cinematography, and editing. The film premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2019 in the section Perspektive Deutsches Kino, which highlights new voices in German cinema. In 2020, the film was nominated for a Grimme Award, one of Germany's most prestigious awards for television and documentary work.
Working once more with director Nicole Vögele, Sick shot "Landschaft und Wahn" ("The Landscape and the Fury," CH 2024) around the Bosnian-Croatian border near Velika Kladuša. The film essay explores questions of home, displacement, and war-related violence. It screened at several international festivals and won the Grand Jury Prize and the Doc Alliance Award at Visions du Réel in Nyon. At the Mirage Festival for the Art of Cinema in Norway, Sick received the award for Best Cinematography.
In 2025, Sick presented his documentary "Das fast normale Leben" ("A Nearly Normal Life") at DOK.fest Munich. The film observes everyday life in a supervised residential group for girls. Its producers, Ulla Lehmann and Andrea Roggon, received the Production Award from the VFF, the German collecting society for film and television producers.