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All Pictures (2)Biography
Frédéric Jaeger was born in 1984 in Starnberg. He studied film studies and philosophy at the Free University of Berlin and began working as a film critic during his studies. In 2004 he founded the online film magazine critic.de, serving as its editor‑in‑chief until 2023; over the years the site grew into an important platform for film criticism on the internet with numerous contributors. From 2005 he regularly ran projects such as the workshop "Ganz Junge Kritik," offered from 2005 to 2011 as part of the Semaine de la Critique at the Cannes Film Festival.
From 2013 to 2023 Jaeger was the executive director of the Association of German Film Critics (VDFK); from 2015 to 2020 he was artistic director of the Week of Criticism that runs alongside the Berlinale, a program conceptually modeled on Cannes's Semaine de la Critique. In 2015/2016 he worked as a research assistant for the politician Tabea Rößner (Alliance 90/The Greens) on film policy.
Jaeger made his directing debut in 2016 with Nino Klingler on the short film "Nur der Fortschritt" ("Nothing But Progress"). In 2018 he began studies in the film class of Thomas Arslan at the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK). Concurrently he continued writing as a film critic — for critic.de and media outlets including Spiegel Online, taz, Der Freitag, and Berliner Zeitung — and from 2020 to 2023 he was program director of the International Filmfestival Mannheim‑Heidelberg.
As writer, director, producer, and editor Jaeger made several short films during his studies, some of which screened at international festivals. His feature debut is the UdK graduation film "All We Ever Wanted," which he shot between 2021 and 2024. When discussing his approach to the material and the screenplay, Jaeger emphasized how important it was to him to engage thoughtfully and sensitively with the representation of Black characters in everyday life in Germany. His aim was to depict social diversity as something natural and taken for granted, without glossing over lived experiences of racism or reducing the film to that theme alone. Central to this process was his collaboration with his Afro-German co-writer and assistant director Naomi Bechert, who who had already worked on related topics in other contexts.
The film's world premiere took place in July 2024 at the Munich Film Festival in the New German Cinema section. At the achtung berlin festival in 2025 the film won awards for Best Production Design (Frédéric Jaeger, Maximilian Andereya) and Best Costume Design (Charity Collin). The film received its theatrical release in April 2026.