Download Chris Wright’s Vita and Filmography (German) (English)
TILL MURDER DO US PART: SOERING vs HAYSOM
4-part documentary series – UHD – Netflix (Produced by Fruitmarket) 2023 – Directors: André Hörmann, Lena Leonhardt (joint lead editor, with Janine Dauterich)
This gripping true-crime love story focuses on a brutal double murder in the US in 1985. Did the German diplomat’s son Jens Soering kill his girlfriend’s parents? Or was her part in the crime bigger than she admits?
ICH DU WIR – Wer pflegt wen? (Who Nurses Whom?)
84 Min – UHD – Colour – Germany 2023 – Director: Susanne Binninger – WATCH HERE (German only)
At some points in our lives, all of us depend on someone to look after us. But care work in Germany is marked by huge social injustices. Susanne Binnniger’s film focuses on 5 protagonists, highlighting these injustices through their moving personal stories.
TAMING THE GARDEN
90 Min – HD – DCP – Colour – Switzerland/Germany/Georgia 2021 – Director: Salomé Jashi
A powerful man, who is also the former prime minister of Georgia, has developed an exquisite hobby. He collects century old trees along Georgia’s coastline. He commissions his men to uproot them and bring them to his private garden. Some of these trees are as tall as 15-floor-buildings. And in order to transplant a tree of such dimensions some other trees are chopped down, electric cables are shifted and new roads are paved through mandarine plantations.
The film moves the concept of uprooting from its metaphorical meaning into an oppressive, tangible and yet surreal reality.
Written & Directed by Salomé Jashi
Producers Vadim Jendreyko, Erik Winker, Martin Roelly, Salomé Jashi
Camera Goga Devdariani, Salomé Jashi
Editor Chris Wright
Sound Design Philippe Ciompi
Music Supervisor Celia Stroom
Researcher Tamara Mshvenieradze
Line Producer Pascal More
Associate Producers Hercli Bundi, Susanne Guggenberger, Ümit Uludag, Anna Dziapshipa
A Coproduction of Mira Film, CORSO Film, Sakdoc Film
Funded by Federal Office for Culture Switzerland (FOC), Film- und Medienstiftung NRW, Eurimages, Fachausschuss Film and Medienkunst BS / BL, Georgian National Film Center, IDFA Bertha Fund, Succès Passage Antenne, SRG SSR
What remains? Biographies leave traces. The passage of time does too. The relationship between these is one theme of Thomas Heise’s “Heimat is a Space in Time.”
The film follows biographical traces of a scattered family from the end of the 19th century, through the 20th and beyond. They are people who chanced across each other, then lost each other again. Whose children and grandchildren are now themselves passing. They speak and they are silent. Experience first love and lost happiness. Fathers, mothers, sons, brothers, affairs, hurt and joy in changing landscapes which carry in them various, intertwined traces of the ages. A collage of images, sounds, letters, diaries, notes, sounds, voices, fragments. “Heimat is a Space in Time” is a reflection on time and love within it, on our human nature, in sounds, images and languages. There is always something left which doesn’t fit.
Producer Heino Deckert
Written & Directed by Thomas Heise
Voice Thomas Heise
Camera Stefan Neuberger
Additional Camera (Berlin) Peter Badel, Börres Weiffenbach
Camera Assistant Austria Christoph Varga
Sound Johannes Schmelzer-Ziringer
Sound Design Markus Krohn
Mix Martin Steyer
Editor Chris Wright
Assistant Editor Conny Albrecht
Assistant to the Director Georg Oberhumer
Colour Correction Stefan Neuberger
Bookkeeping Barbara Konsek, Monika Lendl
Line Producers Prisca Beyer, Hanne Lassl
Associated Producers Tina Börner, Katharina Mosser
Coproducers Johannes Holzhausen, Johannes Rosenberger, Constantin Wulff
Postproduction Supervisor René Frölke
Mastering and DCP Paul Schön
Production Assistants Emilie Dauptain, Vaidute Fischer
Festivals
2020
deutscher filmpreis – nominated
preis der österreichischen filmkritik – papierener gustl – best documentary
preis der deutschen filmkritik – best documentary
2019
berlinale forum – caligari filmpreis
visions du reel – grand prix de la compétition internationale
crossing europe – best documentary
jeonju iff – (frontline)
bel docs – (meteors)
swr doku festival – deutscher dokumentarfilmpreis
fid marseille – (masterclass)
karlovy vary film festival – (imagina)
jerusalem film festival – chantal akerman award
jerusalem film festival – avner shalev – yad vashem chairman’s award
duisburger filmwoche – nomination
new york film festival – (projections)
festival des deutschen films paris
message to man international film festival
european film award – documentary selection
pacific meridian film festival
toronto international film festival
dokufest prizren
lussas documentary film festival
montreal international documentary festival – special jury prize
international documentary film festival amsterdam (focus: it still hurts)
muestra de cine de lanzarote – jury prize
THE COMMUNIST (DER FUNKTIONÄR)
72 Min – HD – DCP – Colour and b/w – Germany 2018 – Director: Andreas Goldstein
The “Film about the Father” is a difficult genre. Andreas Goldstein, son of the GDR cultural functionary Klaus Gysi (1912–1999) has tackled this task with a complete lack of vanity, but with insistence: measured and calm, honest and intellectual, analytical and personal. He uncovers a mosaic that renounces both the teleologies of the self-styled winners of history and the simplifications of (West) German Oscar nominees. This film is not about the lives of others, but about his own life. Not about yesterday, about today, too.
The focus is on the father and his lifelong ambition to found a social order in which “spirit and power are in complete agreement”. It’s on the primal scene of the Jewish intellectual (the sight of a dead worker), the career of an SED Party communist (head of a publishing house, cultural minister, ambassador, state secretary for church matters), insights into a driven private life. Part of this “communist genealogy” himself, Goldstein comments own photos, found television material and images from Berlin (then, today) from offscreen, setting a high standard for a re-evaluation of the state that will always be his origin: “We would reject questions about the legitimacy of our present existence. How come we ask them about the past all the time?”
(Barbara Wurm, Catalogue DOK Leipzig 2018
Producers Heino Deckert, Andreas Goldstein
Written & Directed by Andreas Goldstein
Camera Jakobine Motz
Editor Chris Wright
“Big Daddy”, “Leon” and “Warrior” – they are the fighting names of these young men in the MMA ring. The abbreviation stands for Mixed Martial Arts – where everything goes, from wrestling to kickboxing and karate. They kick, punch and pummel their opponent, even when he’s down. Now, a woman has portrayed this very particular world, the film-maker Susanne Binninger, with a real fascination. She examines what drives these men to this unappetizing sport, where they let their bodies be beaten bloody in a cage. What kind of men are they? Her film is on the one hand a look at the laws that govern our neo-liberal societies, and not just superficially – might as right, the ability of the individual to force his way past others – on the biggest of stages, before a crowd thirsting for spectacle. But secondly, “Fighter” is also a film about the martial arts as a spiritual experience, as an inner passage. And about the image of masculinity and the cliches that go with that.
(Rüdiger Suchsland, Kulturthema SWR2)
Written & Directed by Susanne Binninger
Camera Marcus Lenz
Sound Alexander Czart
Editing Chris Wright
Music Jörg Follert
Additional Camera Henning Drechsler, Patrick Waldmann, Sandeep Mehta, Jasenko Rasol
Additional Editing Sandeep Mehta
Additional Sound Christoph Mohr, Carlos de Albuquerque
Postproduction Sound Torus GmbH Köln
Sound Design Jan Petzold
Mix Matthias Schwab
Postproduction Image Farbkult Cologne, Studio Mitte Berlin
Colour Grading Christine Hiam
Graphic Design Thomas Schmidl
Associate Producer Florian-Malte Fimpel
Producers Erik Winker, Martin Roelly
Commissioning Editor Daniel Schössler (ZDF/3 sat)
Production CORSO Film Cologne (Erik Winker)
Development supported by Gerd Ruge-Project Grant of the Film und Medienstiftung NRW
Production funded by Film- und Medienstiftung NRW and FFA
In Coproduction with 3sat
Festivals & Awards
World Premiere DOK Leipzig 2016 / International Programm
Awarded with the Prize „Gedanken-Aufschluss“ of the Prison Inmates at Regis-Breitingen
Awarded the German Camera Prize 2017 for Best Feature-Length Editing (Chris Wright)
Longlisted for the German Film Prize 2018
