Biography
Leonie Stade, born in 1988 in Lindau on Lake Constance, worked as a photo model in South Africa, Milan and Paris after graduating from high school in 2007. In 2009 she studied documentary film directing at the Hochschule für Fernsehen und Film Munich. Her short documentary film "2m2 Leben", about the precarious housing situation in Hong Kong, was shown at several international festivals and was nominated for the CNN Journalist Award.
During her studies, she co-directed with her fellow student Annika Blendl the 60-minute documentary "Nowhereman" (2012) about the attempt of a 22-year-old minor criminal to start a new life after his time in prison.
Together with Blendl and fellow student and film scholar Michael Schmitt, Stade founded the production company Man on Mars in 2013, which mainly produces TV reports and reportages. Stade herself has produced numerous items and reports for the TV magazines La Vita (BR) and Frontal 21 (ZDF).
At the Munich Film Festival 2015 Leonie Stade and Annika Blendl presented their second joint documentary film: "Mollath - Und plötzlich bist du verrückt", about the scandalous case of Gustl Mollath, who was unlawfully institutionalised and spent seven years in a psychiatric ward again.
With Man on Mars (together with Blendl and Michael Schmitt), she then produced the TV documentary "Mein Glaube, meine Liebe" (2017, directed by Michael Schmitt). The documentary film "Marikas Missio" (2017, directed by Michael Schmitt), about a lesbian religion teacher fighting for her episcopal teaching license, was also a Man on Mars production. It won the prize for Best Documentary at the FILMZ Festival of German Cinema and was nominated for the Studio Hamburg Young Talent Award.
In Autumn 2017, Stade and Annika Blendl began filming "All I Never Wanted", a satirical tragicomedy with autobiographical documentary elements about four women who are seeking their professional place in the world of media, theatre and fashion and reach their limits. The film premiered at the Munich Filmfest 2019 and was released in German cinemas in December 2019.