Director, Screenplay
Berlin

Biography

Lutz Pehnert was born in East Berlin (then GDR) in 1961; his father Horst Pehnert was GDR Minister of Culture. As Pehnert later recounted in an interview, he was "too lazy to graduate from high school" and instead trained as a typesetter. He then volunteered at the daily Junge Welt, a position he got in no small part due to his father's influence, though, Pehnert said, "at the paper [...] almost everyone was somebody's kid." After completing his traineeship, Pehnert stayed with Junge Welt and worked in the cultural editorial department. He also interviewed stars from the West who performed in the GDR, especially in the 1980s, including Pina Bausch, Joe Cocker, Peter Maffay and Herman van Veen. In the early 1990s, he headed the culture department of Junge Welt.   

After Pehnert had already made a first television feature (about Herman van Veen) in 1993, he left Junge Welt in 1995 and began working as a freelance writer and director for television. His medium-length documentary "Brand" (co-directed by Matthias Ehlert), about the last "drunk brigade" from the GDR at the Brandenburg an der Havel steelworks, was shown in the Berlinale Forum in 1997. In the following years and decades, he realized numerous TV documentaries and reportages as author and/or director, often in collaboration with Matthias Ehlert.    

His works often dealt with culture, entertainment and life in the GDR and with prominent personalities from East Germany. For example, in "Tatort Ostdeutschland: 30 Jahre 'Polizeiruf 110'" (2000), "Geschichte Mitteldeutschlands - Mörder, Häscher und Halunken" (2001), "Karl May - der Phantast aus Sachsen" (2004) and "Leben in Geschichten - Wolfgang Kohlhaase" (2006). For his multi-part documentary "DDR Ahoy! Geschichten der ostdeutschen Seefahrt" (2010), he received the prestigious Grimme Award in 2011.   

After further TV productions, such as "Ostrock - Zwischen Liebe und Zorn" (2015), Pehnert presented the documentary "Partisan" in the Panorama section of the Berlinale 2018, which dealt with the eventful history of the Berlin Volksbühne theater between 1992 and 2017. Subsequently, he again worked on some television productions, such as contributions to the documentary series "Geheimnisvolle Orte" (2018-19), the documentary "Die geheimen Depots von Buchenwald - Lösung eines Rätsels" (2919) and some episodes of the three seasons of "Berlin - Schicksalsjahre einer Stadt" (2019, 2020, 2022).   

Pehnert's documentary "Bettina", which traces the biographical and artistic career of singer-songwriter Bettina Wegner, premiered in the Panorama section of the 2022 Berlinale.

Filmography

2021/2022
  • Director
  • Screenplay
2017/2018
  • Director
  • Screenplay
1996
  • Director