Biography
Matthias Freier was born in Hamburg in 1969. After studying philosophy and film studies, he spent six years in New York starting from the mid-1990s, where he attended the New York Film Academy. For years, Freier has been active primarily in the field of music videos and advertising. As a director, he has created numerous commercials for well-known brands such as Deutsche Bahn, Toyota (awarded the Golden Lion in Cannes 2018), Bauhaus, the Japanese beauty brand Shiseido, and Uniqlo, one of Japan's largest clothing retailers. He has also directed music videos for artists such as Seeed, Joy Denalane, Anna Deppenbusch, Jochen Distelmeyer, Die Fantastischen Vier, Samy Deluxe, and Eagle Eye Cherry. Additionally, he is a co-founder of the creative studio "rejell" based in Hamburg and New York, which includes director Andreas Dresen among its members.
In addition to numerous commissioned works, Freier has also made short films over the years. In 2014, he produced "Icefighters Leipzig," a short portrait of Manfred "Mannix" Wolf, the coach of the titular ice hockey team, which screened at the Leipzig Documentary Film Festival. Another short film, "Hauskeeper," was created in 2022. Set in the aftermath of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, it tells the story of a Polish housekeeper living in a villa surrounded by toxic nature and masculinity, along with a boy and his domineering father. "Hauskeeper" was screened at various international short film festivals, including Cannes, Hollywood, New York, Manchester and Berlin.
Matthias Freier's first feature film, the documentary "Die Unsichtbaren" ("The Invisible Ones"), premiered at the Hamburg Film Festival in September 2023 and was released in German cinemas in February 2024. The film centers around his stepmother, Marianne Atzeroth-Freier, who, as one of the first female investigators at Hamburg's homicide squad, investigated one of the most gruesome cases of the 1990s, the "Hamburg Acid Barrel Murders," amidst patriarchal dominance within the police system and active obstruction by male superiors.