David Nawrath, born 1980 in Berlin, grew up alternately in Germany and Iran. In 2005, together with Florian Schewe, he made his directing debut with the feature-length documentary "Moharram - Jugend der ewigen Morgenröte", a portrait of modern teenagers in restrictive Tehran. The film was screened at the Kassel DOK Festival in 2005, among others, and in the same year Nawrath started studying directing at the German Film and Television Academy Berlin (dffb). His 17-minute short film "Was bleibt" was nominated for the German Short Film Award and for the European Short Film Award. At the festival Premiers Plans in Angers (France), Nawrath was awarded the Grand Jury Prize in the section 'European Student Films'. He graduated with the short film "Die offene Tür" (2010).

In 2011, Nawrath was selected as one of six international filmmakers for the Résidence du Festival de Cannes in Paris. Back in Germany, he shot several documentary series with the cook Sarah Wiener for the culture TV channel Arte. For the public broadcaster RBB he realised the reportage "Mein wunderbarer Imbiss - Mit Kim Fisher übers Land" (2017).

Parallel to these commissions, Nawrath and Paul Salisbury wrote the screenplay for the feature film "Atlas" ("The Mover"), which received a nomination for the Deutscher Drehbuchpreis (a prize for screenplays yet to be turned into a film) in 2016. At the beginning of 2017 the shooting of "Atlas", which was produced among others by Hans-Christian Schmid, took place in Frankfurt am Main. The drama about a furniture remover who meets his adult son again after having him abandoned as a child, premiered at the Hofer Filmtage 2018. At the Turin Film Festival, the film received a special prize from the jury and Rainer Bock won Best Lead Actor. The film was theatrically released in Germany in April 2019. At the German Film Award 2019 "Atlas" received nominations in the categories Best Screenplay and Best Lead Actor.