Jeanine Meerapfel

Biography

Jeanine Meerapfel, born on June 14, 1943 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to German-Jewish immigrants, graduated from the School of Journalism in Buenos Aires and subsequently worked as an editor and freelance journalist. From 1964 to 1968, she was one of the first women to enroll at the Institute of Film Design at the Ulm Academy of Design (HfG Ulm); there she studied with Alexander Kluge and Edgar Reitz, among others, and made several TV documentaries. She continued to work as a freelance journalist until the end of the 1970s. She also gave film seminars at the HfG Ulm and at Goethe Institutes in various countries.  

Meerapfel made her feature film debut with "Malou" (1980), which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, where it was awarded the FIPRESCI Prize of the International Film Critics. At the San Sebastián Film Festival, her film about a young Jewish woman who embarks on an existentialist search won the director's prize. In 1981 her autobiographical documentary "Im Land meiner Eltern" ("In the Coutry of My Parents") premiered at the International Film Festival in Mannheim, Germany. Her next documentary, "Die Kümmeltürkin geht" ("Melek Leaves"), about the fate of a Turkish guest worker, received the Interfilm Prize at the 1985 Berlinale as well as the German Film Critics' Prize.  

The feature film "Die Verliebten" ("Days to Remember", 1987) also focused on the fate of migrants: In it, Meerapfel tells a story about the search among the young generation of guest workers for a home, torn between the country of their parents and the place of their own childhood. At the same time, from 1986 to 1989, she worked on the award-winning documentary "Desembarcos – Es gibt kein Vergessen" ("Desembarcos – When Memory Speaks"), an examination of the period of military dictatorship in Argentina. The feature film "La Amiga" ("The Girlfriend"), starring Liv Ullmann, also dealt with fates shaped by the Argentine dictatorship. The film was nominated for the 1989 German Federal Film Award, among others, and Liv Ullmann and Cipé Lincovsky were jointly honored with the Actress Award in San Sebastián.  

Since 1990 Jeanine Meerapfel has been a professor in the field of film/television at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne. In 1995 she completed work on the feature film "Amigomío", which received the Saarland Screenplay Award. In 2000, her cinematic work was honored with the Artist Award of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia. In 2001 followed the family drama "Annas Sommer" ("Anna's Summer"), starring Ángela Molina and Herbert Knaup. The film won the special prize at the Argentinian Festival Mar del Plata.  

In the documentary "Fictional Lies on Right Occasions" (2003), Jeanine Meerapfel portrayed the two Greek musicians Floros Floridis and Babis Papadopoulos. In 2007, she made the documentary "Mosconi – oder wem gehört die Welt" ("Mosconi – Or To Whom The World Belongs"), in which she portrayed the struggle for survival of a northern Argentine town scarred by privatization.  

In 2012, Meerapfel's first feature film in more than ten years opened in theaters: "Der deutsche Freund" (The German Friend") tells of the love between a daughter of Jewish emigrants in Buenos Aires and a son of German immigrants whose father was in the SS. At the Argentinean film award Cóndor de Plata, the autobiographically influenced film was nominated in five categories: Best Film, Best Director, Best Female Lead, Best Production Design and Best Music.  

After an extended break from filmmaking, Meerapfel realized the project "Moving Sand/Topos" in 2019 together with Floros Floridis and in cooperation with the Berlin Academy of Arts: a combination of documentary-experimental film essay and live performance on the thematic complex of artificial intelligence, modern technology and human perception. The 47-minute film was also screened at the 2020 Thessaloniki Documentary Festival.  

Also in 2020, she was the initiator of the European Alliance of Academies, an alliance of initially 60 art academies and cultural institutions from countries in the European Union, as well as the United Kingdom and Norway, working together to advocate the freedom of art. In the same year, Meerapfel was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit 1st Class "for her achievements as a filmmaker and author as well as her commitment to human rights, freedom of expression and the equal diversity of cultures." The following year, she was named honorary president of the German Federal Association of Directors (BVR).  

At the International Film Festal Mar del Plata in Argentina, Jeanine Meerapfel presented her very personal documentary "Eine Frau" ("A Woman", DE/AR 2021) in November 2021, which traces the stages of her mother's life between Germany, France and Argentina. The German theatrical release was in November 2022.