Marcel Mettelsiefen

In the same year, In Her Hands, was nominated for three Emmy awards, and won the award for Outstanding Politics & Government Documentary. Mettelsiefen has a background in photo journalism and has reported from the Middle East and Afghanistan, and South America. Mettelsiefen studied political science and medicine at the Humboldt University in Berlin.

• Name — Marcel Mettelsiefen • Born — 1978 • Birthplace — Munich, West Germany • Occupation — Documentary filmmaker, cinematographer, producer • Years Active — 2012–present • Notable Works — Watani: My Homeland, Children of The Taliban, In Her Hands

Mettelsiefen was born in Munich to a German father and an Ecuadorian mother and began taking photographs after graduating from high school. He came to photojournalism through his work for the magazine Zenith – Zeitschrift für den Orient, founded in 1998. In early 2000, he traveled to Israel and the Palestinian Territories, photographing for the Associated Press news agency. After his return, he began working for the news German Press news agency, for which he reported from crisis areas such as Afghanistan (2001), Iraq (2003) and Haiti (2004). In addition to his work as a photographer, Mettelsiefen studied politics and medicine at the FU Berlin. In 2008, he went to Afghanistan for 14 months, where he started a cooperation with Spiegel correspondent Christoph Reuter from Kabul. At the beginning of the Arab Spring, Mettelsiefen traveled to the besieged areas in Egypt and Libya for the news magazine Der Spiegel. From 2011 to 2014, he travelled undercover to Syria more than 28 times and produced numerous reports and short documentaries for which he received numerous international awards, including the Emmy Award, Bafta, Grierson and the Dupont Award. One of Mettelsiefen's films is the short documentary Watani: My Homeland, which tells the story of children in war-torn Syria. Over a period of three years, Marcel documented the life of a Syrian mother and her four young children in the besieged city of Aleppo. The film was nominated for an Academy Award in 2017 and won a Peabody Award, a Grierson Award, and an Emmy Award. • Illustration — Mettelsiefen in 2015 In his four-part documentary series "Afghanistan – The Wounded Land", Mettelsiefen combines archival footage with first-hand testimonials from Afghans. Children of the Taliban followed a cinematic account of the lives of children in Afghanistan told through the lens and stories of four young children. His feature documentary In Her Hands premiered on the opening weekend of the Toronto Film Festival 2022 and was sold to Netflix. In 2023, Mettelsiefen released Tanja, a documentary about Tanja Nijmeijer, a Dutch woman named who was once part of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The film, according to Mettelsiefen, is meant to depict her as a strong but not necessarily likeable woman and a victim of male chauvinism. Mettelsiefen first met Nijmeijer in the early 2010s, while reporting on the Colombian peace process on behalf of Der Spiegel, but he did not secure enough funds and support for a documentary on her until 2019. In his original draft, the film would "hide" her at first and describe her indirectly through interviews with other people, then show her on camera midway. However, his editors rejected that idea.

• 2024 state of rage • 2023 A Second Shot • 2023 Tanja • 2022 Children of the Taliban • 2022 In Her Hands • 2021 I Want My Country Back • 2020 El conserje • 2019 Afghanistan – The Wounded Land (TV Series documentary) (4 episodes) • 2019 Cajun Navy • 2016 Watani: My Homeland (Documentary short) • 2016 Slum Britain: 50 Years On (TV Movie documentary) • 2016 Children on the Frontline: The Escape (TV Movie documentary) • 2014–2016 Frontline (TV Series documentary) (2 episodes) • 2014 Unreported World (TV Series documentary) (1 episode) • 2014 Syria: Children on the Frontline (TV Movie documentary)