Maren Ade

Directing

Maren Ade

Born 1976-12-12 · Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg, West Germany [now Germany]

Maren Ade began studying at the HFF Munich in 1998 majoring in Production and Media Economics and then changed to the Film and Television Department in 2000 at the HFF Munich. In 2001 she founded the film production company Komplizen Film with Janine Jackowski and together they produced Maren Ade’s film The Forest for the Trees (2003). The film received several honours, including the Special Jury Award at the Sundance Film Festival in 2005. During that same year it was nominated for the German Film Prize. Her second film Everyone Else (2009) was first shown in competition at the International Film Festival in Berlin in 2009 and received the Silver Bear as Best Film (the Grand Jury Award). Her third feature film Toni Erdmann (2016) had its world premiere in Competition at the Cannes Film Festival 2016 and received the Fipresci Award. The film went on to play at many international festivals and won numerous awards. Maren Ade doesn’t only produce her own films, but also works as a producer for other films, like Tabu (2012) and Una Mujer Fantástica (2017).

Acting credits

Behind the camera

Maria poster
6.5

Maria Callas, the world's greatest opera singer, lives the last days of her life in 1970s Paris, as she confronts her identity and life.

Maria

2024

Spencer poster
6.7

During her Christmas holidays with the royal family at the Sandringham estate in Norfolk, England, Diana decides to leave her marriage to Prince Charles.

Spencer

2021

Toni Erdmann poster
6.9

Convinced that his daughter has forgotten how to laugh, a father shows up unannounced while she's living abroad and bombards her with outrageous jokes.

Toni Erdmann

2016

Toni Erdmann poster
6.9

Convinced that his daughter has forgotten how to laugh, a father shows up unannounced while she's living abroad and bombards her with outrageous jokes.

Toni Erdmann

2016

Toni Erdmann poster
6.9

Convinced that his daughter has forgotten how to laugh, a father shows up unannounced while she's living abroad and bombards her with outrageous jokes.

Toni Erdmann

2016

Ach, diese Lücke, diese entsetzliche Lücke poster
7.6

Twenty-year-old Joachim is unexpectedly accepted at drama school in Munich and moves into his grandparents' upper-class villa. From then on, he tries to find his identity as a young man between the world of theater and the everyday life of his eccentric grandparents.

Ach, diese Lücke, diese entsetzliche Lücke

2026

The Girl with the Leica poster
6.0

The love story of Gerda Taro and Robert Capa.

The Girl with the Leica

2026

A E I O U – A Quick Alphabet of Love poster
4.9

Anna is 60 and her acting heyday is now behind her. She lives on her own but has a friend and confidant in her downstairs neighbour Michel, who is also single. Reluctantly, Anna accepts a job as a language coach for 17-year-old Adrian who has a speech impediment and is something of a misfit. She recognises him as the boy who recently snatched her handbag in the street.

A E I O U – A Quick Alphabet of Love

2022

Delicious poster
4.8

During their vacation in the French countryside, a wealthy German family becomes entangled with a young hotel worker harboring sinister intentions.

Delicious

2025

Hotel Very Welcome poster
5.5

Five young Europeans (German, English, and Irish) try to find answers to life's questions in India and Thailand.

Hotel Very Welcome

2007

The Dreamed Adventure poster
5.9

The story of a woman living in the border region between Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey, who agrees to partake in a special deal in order to help a friend. However, this will lead her into a dangerous situation, and she will have to confront her desires

The Dreamed Adventure

2026

You Will Not Have My Hate poster
5.9

The night of November 13, 2015 changes everything for Antoine. Hélène, his wife and mother of his young son, dies during the terrorist attacks at the Bataclan club in Paris. In a moving Facebook post, he counters the assassins' hatred with the love for his son – a message, that moves people worldwide.

You Will Not Have My Hate

2022

Everyone Else poster
6.0

While on a Mediterranean vacation, a seemingly happy boyfriend and girlfriend find their connection to one another tested as they bond with another couple.

Everyone Else

2009

Everyone Else poster
6.0

While on a Mediterranean vacation, a seemingly happy boyfriend and girlfriend find their connection to one another tested as they bond with another couple.

Everyone Else

2009

Everyone Else poster
6.0

While on a Mediterranean vacation, a seemingly happy boyfriend and girlfriend find their connection to one another tested as they bond with another couple.

Everyone Else

2009

Exile poster
6.0

A chemical engineer of foreign origin faces discrimination and bullying at work, plunging him into an identity crisis.

Exile

2020

Giraffe poster
5.2

A Danish summer: long days turn into blue nights. A tunnel is being built to connect Denmark and Germany. Three people meet and part ways again.

Giraffe

2020

Western poster
6.6

A group of German construction workers set out for a foreign construction site in the Bulgarian province. The strange country awakens adventure feelings among the men. At the same time, they are confronted with their prejudices and mistrust. For two of the men, a nearby village becomes the stage for a competition for the recognition and favor of the village.

Western

2017

Prince poster
5.1

Perhaps they should never have met, but fate wanted otherwise. Monika and Joseph. She is a curator, he is an immigrant from Congo, a businessman with an unclear past and present. They meet during a police raid at a bar, when the first of many sparks flies between them. An understated love story, a melodrama without pathos, a fragile story about the ambiguous nature of love and the impossibility of overcoming it through reason.

Prince

2021

When Will It Be Again Like It Never Was Before poster
5.5

Growing up on the grounds of one of Germany's largest psychiatric hospitals is somehow - different. For Joachim, the director's youngest son, the patients are like family. They are also much nicer to him than his two older brothers, who drive him into fits of rage. His mother, painting watercolors, longs for Italian summer nights instead of constant German rain, while his father secretly, but not discreetly enough, goes his own way. But while Joachim slowly grows up, his world, not only through the loss of his first love, gets more and more cracks...

When Will It Be Again Like It Never Was Before

2023

Arabian Nights: Volume 2, The Desolate One poster
7.0

Scheherazade narrates three more tales, supposedly selected from the 470th, 484th and 497th nights of her ordeal: “It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that a Judge will cry instead of giving out her sentence. A runaway murderer will wander through the land for over forty days and will teletransport himself to escape the Guard while dreaming of prostitutes and partridges. A wounded cow will reminisce about a thousand-year-old olive tree while saying what she must say, which will sound none less than sad!

Arabian Nights: Volume 2, The Desolate One

2015

Hedi Schneider Is Stuck poster
6.2

A model family's happy life unexpectedly goes off the rails when the carefree Hedi, played by Laura Tonke, suddenly starts having panic attacks. First mental illness and then drug dependency – the happiness that these happy-go-lucky thirty-somethings once took for granted suddenly seems unattainable, and their world fragile and uncertain.

Hedi Schneider Is Stuck

2015

Arabian Nights: Volume 3, The Enchanted One poster
6.5

In which Scheherazade doubts that she will still be able to tell stories to please the King, given that what she has to tell weighs three thousand tonnes. She therefore escapes from the palace and travels the Kingdom in search of pleasure and enchantment. Her father, the Grand-Vizier, arranges to meet her at the Ferris wheel, and Scheherazade resumes her narration: “Auspicious King, in old shanty towns of Lisbon there was a community of bewitched men who, in all rigour and passion, dedicated themselves to teaching birds to sing…”. And seeing the morning break, Scheherazade fell silent.

Arabian Nights: Volume 3, The Enchanted One

2015

Sleeping Sickness poster
6.4

Ebbo and Vera Velten have spent the better part of the past twenty years living in different African countries. Ebbo is the manager of a sleeping sickness programme. His work is fulfilling. Vera, however, feels increasingly lost in Yaounde’s ex-pat community. She can’t bear the separation from her 14-year-old daughter, Helen, who is attending boarding school in Germany. Ebbo must give up his life in Africa or he risks losing the woman he loves. But his fear of returning to a land now remote to him increases with each passing day. Years later. Alex Nzila, a young French doctor of Congolese origin, travels to Cameroon to evaluate a development project. It’s been a long time since he set foot on this continent, but, instead of finding new prospects, he encounters a destructive, lost man. Like a phantom, Ebbo slips away from his evaluator.

Sleeping Sickness

2011