Biography
Dennis Stormer, born 1990 in Kiel, Germany, was one of the founders of an improvisational theater group and developed installations and performances as a teenager. After graduating from high school, he moved to Berlin, where he worked as a film critic for the online magazine "Negativ". Since 2010 he has directed several short films that have been shown at international festivals. He then began studying directing at the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg, during which time he also visited Columbia University in New York. During his studies, he directed several award-winning short and medium-length films, including the 30-minute documentary "Looking at Others" (2018), which portrays a Romanian village where tourists from all over the world can observe the everyday life of Roma families. In 2019, Stormer successfully completed his studies.
That same year, he began working on his feature film debut, "Youth Topia," which follows a rebellious young woman who suddenly finds herself in a privileged job and a highly stylized lifestyle. The film won the Audience Award at the Zurich Film Festival in 2021, the Youth Jury Award for Best European Feature Film at the Crossing Europe Film Festival in Linz in 2022, and the awards for Best Director and Best Production at the Achtung Berlin Festival in 2022. In parallel, he created the road movie "Full of Fire" (2022), a hybrid of narrative film, musical and documentary. "Full of Fire" won the Gesa Rautenberg Award at the Schleswig-Holstein Film Festival in 2022, and the following year the same award went to "Youth Topia," which was released in August 2023. Besides his work in filmmaking, Dennis Stormer, who lives in Germany and Sweden, is also involved in human rights and environmental activism.