Jury VFF Documentary Film Production Award 2024

Judith Erber

Head of the Funding Department and Consultant at the FilmFernsehFonds Bayern (FFF)

After working in the film industry for several years, Judith Erber graduated from the HFF Munich in 1999 with a degree in Production and Media Management. She then worked as a production coordinator, producer and producer. From 2012 to 2019, she supported the LfA team as a specialist in film funding and film financing. In 2019, she joined the FFF as a director and is responsible for cinema film production, international co-productions, distribution/distribution and BBF. She was a committee member of the IDM, is a guest lecturer at the HFF, a jury member at the Vienna Business Agency and a board member of the Friends of HFF München e.V.

Thomas Frickel

Author, Director and Producer

After studying German language and literature, journalism and sociology in Mainz, Frickel worked as a freelance journalist for several years, focusing on cultural reporting and historical reportage. Since 1968 he has been working in the film industry. Since 1986, Frickel has been chairman and managing director of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Dokumentarfilm (the largest association for independent film in Germany) in various film and cultural policy functions – for example, on the administrative board and executive committee of the FFA, the administrative board of the VG Bild-Kunst, as delegate of the beneficiaries in the VG Wort, on the advisory board of the VFF and the Künstlersozialkasse, etc. For several years he was spokesman for the Film/Media section of the "German Cultural Council". Frickel was also co-founder and until 1999 member of the board of directors of the European Documentary Film Network EDN. He is author, director and producer of numerous short and feature-length documentaries.

Hauke Wendler

Writer, director and producer

Hauke Wendler is an author, director and producer. After studying politics in Hamburg and London, he worked for NDR television for twelve years. In 2006, he founded PIER 53 Filmproduktion with Carsten Rau, with which he also realised cinema productions from 2010. He specialises in the topics of flight and migration. At the same time, from 2013 onwards, he also worked on the history of the plastic chair Monobloc, for which he produced a cinema film and a podcast. Wendler has received numerous awards for his films, including the Grimme Prize. He has also published several books and has worked as a guest lecturer for various universities. In 2021, Hauke Wendler founded his own production company "Other People Pictures".