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Tim van Beveren was born in 1961 in Düsseldorf, Germany. After graduating from high school, he trained as a photographer before studying law in Bonn and art in Urbino, Italy. While still a student, van Beveren began working for film and television production companies. It was also during his studies that he made his first feature film: "Jannan - Die Abschiebung" (1986), about a Kurdish refugee who gets caught up in the bureaucratic and legal maze of Berlin. The film premiered at the Max Ophüls Preis Film Festival.
After completing his studies, Tim van Beveren began working as a filmmaker and journalist. From the beginning, he focused on aviation. His TV report "Zündstoff: Das Risiko fliegt mit" (1994) dealt with the dangers of counterfeit aircraft parts, and in the documentary "Tödliche Logik - ein Film über Airbus" (1995) he took a critical look at the human-machine interface in computerized Airbus cockpits.
Other TV documentaries and reports on aviation, mostly for public broadcasters, include "Überstunden für Piloten" (1996), "Die Story: Gefährliche Flüge" (2002), "Toxische Airlines" (2009) and "Wenn Fliegen krank macht" (2011). Some of his reports have sparked controversy, while others have forced airlines to review their fleets. His independently produced investigative documentary "Ungefiltert eingeatmet – Die Wahrheit über das Aerotoxische Syndrom" ("Unfiltered Breathed In - The Truth about Aerotoxic Syndrome, 2015) won Best Documentary at the Great Lakes International Film Festival in Erie, Pennsylvania (USA).
As a writer on critical aviation issues, Tim van Beveren has also contributed to numerous print media over the years, including Der Spiegel, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Die Zeit, Die Welt, Aviation Today and Air Safety Week. He also worked for several years as a war correspondent in the former Yugoslavia and Iraq.
In addition, van Beveren has worked as a consultant on aviation safety issues and as an expert witness, for example for the public prosecutor's office in Frankfurt am Main after the crash of a Boeing 757 of the Turkish airline Birgenair off the coast of the Dominican Republic in 1996. He also worked for the family of Germanwings pilot Andreas Lubitz, casting doubt on the official findings of the investigation into the crash of Germanwings flight 9525 in March 2015.
Tim van Beveren tackled a completely different topic in the documentary "Komponistinnen" ("Women Composers", 2018), which he realized together with pianist Kyra Steckeweh: the film tells the stories of musicians Fanny Hensel, Emilie Mayer, Lili Boulanger and Mel Bonis, who fought for their place in the male-dominated 19th century music world. At the ALIVEDOC International Documentary Film Festival in Los Angeles, the film won the award for "Best Documentary by or about Women"; at the 10th World Music and Independent Film Festival in Washington, D.C., it won the award for "Best Documentary"; and in 2020, it received the Opus Classic Award in the Audiovisual Music Production category.
Again with Kyra Steckeweh, Tim van Beveren realized the documentary "DORA – Flucht in die Musik" ("DORA - Escape into Music", 2022) about the once famous but now largely forgotten Croatian composer Dora Pejačević (1885-1923).