Martina Priessner (b. 1969) studied social and cultural sciences at Humboldt University in Berlin. Her first major involvement in film came in 2004, when she organized the workshop "Europe in Motion: Moving Images, Shifting Perspectives in Transcultural Cinema in Berlin." The following year she made her directorial debut with Tuncay Kulaoğlu on the short film "Die Rasur" ("Wet Shave"), which screened at numerous international festivals. Another collaboration with Kulaoğlu followed in 2008 with the short film "Die sechs Tage von Adam und Eva," which, however, remained unfinished. From 2008 to 2010, Priessner worked as a dramaturge and curator at Berlin’s Ballhaus Naunynstraße, where her projects included the theater parcours "Kahvehane – Turkish Delight," "German Fright? Anatolian Coffee Houses in Kreuzberg and Neukölln."  

German-Turkish migration has remained a central theme throughout her work. Her first feature-length documentary, "Wir sitzen im Süden" ("Down South," 2010), portrayed four call center employees of Turkish origin who answered the phone under German names such as Ralf Becker or Ilona Manzke. The film was nominated for the Grimme Prize.  

During an extended stay in Istanbul in 2013, she made the 60-minute found-footage film "Everyday I’m Çapuling" about the Gezi Park protests, which also screened internationally. From 2014 to 2015, Priessner was a fellow at the Istanbul Policy Center, where she directed "650 Wörter" ("650 Words," 2016), a mid-length film exploring language and migration.  

Her documentary "Die Wächterin" ("The Guardian," 2020), a portrait of a Syriac Orthodox nun in southeastern Turkey, premiered at DOK Leipzig in October 2020 and received the Goethe-Institut Documentary Film Prize. In 2023, Priessner began work on "Die Möllner Briefe" ("The Mölln Letters"), about condolence letters withheld for decades following the deadly racist arson attack in Mölln in 1992. The film premiered at the 2025 Berlinale in the Panorama Dokumente section, where it won both the Amnesty International Film Award and the Panorama Audience Award. Soon after, it also received the Roman Brodmann Prize from the Haus des Dokumentarfilms, awarded to "outstanding works of political, investigative, and socially relevant documentary filmmaking." The film was released in German cinemas in September 2025.