Biography
Verena Kuri was born in Augsburg, Germany, in 1979. She studied directing at the Universidad del Cine (FUC) in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where her student short films were screened at international film festivals. In 2012, she co-founded the production company Nabis Film Group, with offices in Buenos Aires, Berlin, and Vienna. Her feature debut, "Una Hermana" ("One Sister," AR/DE/AT, 2016), received the award for Best Editing at the Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema, shared with Sofía Brockenshire and Laura Bierbrauer. The film follows a young woman searching for answers after her sister disappears without a trace in a provincial Argentine town, confronting official indifference, conflicting clues, and mounting despair along the way. For the television documentary "Die Tochter von …" ("The Daughter of...," 2019), part of the German broadcaster ZDF's "Ab 18!" series, Kuri received both the Grimme Prize and the German Human Rights Film Award. The film tells the story of a young Argentine woman whose mother was abducted years earlier and disappeared into forced prostitution.
Together with Laura Bierbrauer, Kuri directed the feature film "Fern von uns" ("Far from Us," AR/DE/AT, 2019), which premiered in the Forum section of the Berlin International Film Festival. Her experimental short documentary "A Living Room" (2023), an exploration of a quintessentially German living room, screened at the Landshut Short Film Festival. Her seven-minute short "Living Room" (2026), in which she examines the belongings left behind by a deceased family, premiered at the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival.
Together with Iris Janssen, Kuri co-directed the feature documentary "Töchter Europas" (2026), a kaleidoscopic road movie that follows women traveling by long-distance coach across Europe. Through their journeys, the film explores a wide range of personal circumstances, motivations, and experiences, examining mobility and migration through the lens of everyday life.