Jury #1
DOC Award
Comedy
Magdalena Wiedenhofer
Magdalena Wiedenhofer is a Swiss-born film and theatre actress and director. At the age of seven, she began her career as ‘Petite Fille’ at the Châtelet de Paris. Further productions followed in Germany. At 17, she worked as a freelance assistant director in Germany and France and directed her first plays. From 2009 to 2013, she studied under the artistic direction of Luk Perceval at the Adk Ludwigsburg, during which time she received her first permanent engagements at the Staatstheater Wiesbaden and Münchner Volkstheater and shot her first short films with the Filmakademie Ludwigsburg. She has worked with film directors Shirel Peleg, Torsten C. Fischer, Samira Radsi, Kai Wessel and Maurice Hübner (in the Grimme Prize-nominated ‘Boom Boom Bruno’), among others. She can be seen in various film and television formats such as Sky, ZDF, ARD, SWR and Arte. Most recently, she fell into Corinna Harfouch’s arms in ‘Tatort Berlin’. Since 2025, she has been writing her first plays as a freelance author.
Tanja Schmidbauer
Tanja Schmidbauer was born in 1993 in Prien am Chiemsee and discovered her passion for filmmaking at the age of ten. After completing her high school diploma, she pursued a degree in English Studies at LMU Munich, focusing on literature, and spent a year abroad at the University of Sussex in Brighton, England. Following her bachelor’s degree, she studied production and media management at the HFF Munich. Together with her brother Andreas, Tanja produced and directed the dialect comedies “Hinterdupfing” (2014), “Austreten” (2017), and “Wer gräbt den Bestatter ein?” (2022) through their joint company, Schmidbauer-Film. Schmidbauer-Film operates as a production company (including “Bubbles”, 2025) and, in the German-speaking region, also as a distributor (including “Shahid”, 2024).
Julius Grimm
Julius Grimm was born in 1987 in Regensburg, Germany, and discovered an early passion for storytelling through film. After completing his specialized high school diploma at the Rainer Werner Fassbinder School of Design in Munich, he trained as a Media Designer for Picture & Sound at ProSiebenSat.1 Produktion, graduating in 2010. In 2019, he earned a diploma in Feature Film Directing from the University of Television and Film Munich (HFF). Since 2017, he has served on the juries of numerous film festivals, and since 2018 he has taught, including an annual directing seminar in HFF Munich’s screenwriting department.
