Biography
Benjamin Rost was born in Augsburg, Germany, in 1987. He trained at the Bavarian Academy for Television in Munich until 2009, before going on to study philosophy and political science at the Munich School of Political Science.
In 2013, he began studying documentary directing at the Film Academy Baden-Württemberg in Ludwigsburg. There, he made several short films, including the 30-minute documentary "Die Beschützer" ("The Guardians," 2015), which follows two aspiring bodyguards through their training.
During his studies, Rost lived between 2017 and 2019 in Johannesburg, South Africa, and Kigali, Rwanda, where he worked on the youth television program "Iwacu" produced by the German development agency GIZ (Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit), which supports international development projects.
He completed his degree in 2020 with the feature-length documentary "Portrait on the Search for Happiness," about diamond diggers in South Africa. The film premiered at the Hof International Film Festival in 2020, screened at numerous festivals worldwide, and received several awards. In Germany, it was also broadcast on television.
Rost's documentary "Harraga – Those Who Burn Their Lives" (2023), about five Moroccan teenagers attempting to reach Spain as stowaways on ships, also screened at many international festivals, where it won several awards. In Germany, it was nominated for the German Documentary Film Award.
Alongside his cinema work, Rost has directed short television reports for formats such as "Lebenslinien," "Plan B," and "Wir in Bayern." These include "Das Leben beginnt nach dem Knast" (2024) and "Inge und die Kraft des Lachens" (2024), which features Inge Fechter, a well-known laughter yoga trainer and motivational speaker in Germany.
Together with Erec Brehmer, who had worked as an editor with Rost on "Harraga – Those Who Burn Their Lives," "Das Leben beginnt nach dem Knast," and "Inge und die Kraft des Lachens," he began working on the theatrical documentary "Born to Fake" in 2023 about media fabricator Michael Born, who caused a major scandal in Germany in the 1990s with staged television reports. The film premiered at the Munich Film Festival in 2025 and went on to receive the One Future Prize from the Interfilm Academy Munich, the Baden-Württemberg Film Award at the Stuttgart Film Exhibition, and the Documentary Film Prize at the Biberach Film Festival. It was released in cinemas in May 2026.