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All Pictures (2)Biography
Pia Lenz was born in Herne in 1986. She studied in Dortmund and Columbia, USA, before completing a Master's degree at the Hamburg Media School. She worked as a freelancer for the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, Spiegel Online and NDR, among others. Later, Lenz worked as a trainee at Norddeutscher Rundfunk, where she also realised her first documentary film "Hudekamp- Ein Heimatfilm" together with Christian v. Brockhausen. In it, the filmmakers portray everyday life in the notorious Lübeck high-rise housing estate Hudekamp. The film was shown at the DOK.fest Munich and at the Hamburg Documentary Film Week 2013 and received the German Television Award for Best Documentary Film and the German Social Award of the Federal Association of Independent Welfare Organisations.
As a director and author for cinema and TV, Lenz has also repeatedly dealt with the topics of flight and migration. For example, in the half-hour reportage "Mujib - Ohne Eltern auf der Flucht" (2015), about a 13-year-old Afghan who was selected by the Taliban as a suicide bomber against his will and then fled alone to Germany.
Lenz's first feature-length cinema documentary "Alles gut" (2016) had a similar theme: For it, she accompanied two children from refugee families for a year and documented the families' attempts to find their way in their new home. "Alles gut" premiered at the Nordic Film Days Lübeck at the end of 2016 and was released nationwide in March 2017. The film received a nomination for the German Film Critics' Award and was awarded the Grimme Prize.
Her following cinema documentary "Für immer" ("For Ever") explores a decades-long love affair and the question of what really counts at the end of life. It premiered at DOK.fest Munich in May 2023; the theatrical release was in November 2023.