Biography
Lisa Wagner studied Theatre, Film and Television Studies, Education and French at universities in Germany, Italy, France and Canada. While still a student, she began working for various television stations in 2009. She made her first short film in 2010 at the Institute for Theater, Film and Television Studies at the University of Cologne. In 2010/2011 she worked as assistant director and co-writer on Stefano Levi's feature documentary "Out of the Darkness" (2011), which was shot in Nepal and won awards at various international festivals.
From 2011 to 2015, Wagner completed a postgraduate course in directing at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne. During this time, she realized the short documentary "Der Expressmann" (2013), about a legendary Cologne newspaper vendor. After graduating, Wagner was the initiator of a writers' workshop ("Drehbuchkolloquium") and founded the production company Pulverfilm together with Johanna Domke in 2019, with offices in Cologne and Berlin.
Her feature-length documentary "Fritsch's Pfusch" ("Fritsch's Flub", CH/DE 2019), about the famous theater director Herbert Fritsch and his last production at the Berliner Volksbühne, was screened at the Max Ophüls Preis and DOK.fest Munich, among others. Together with Annie Hofmann, she realized the reportage "Alles im Fluss" (2019) for the ZDF series format "Plan B", about the threatening destruction of rivers and lakes, and was one of the directors of the TV documentary series "Friederike klopft an!" (2021-2022).
In 2021, Wagner began work on the theatrical documentary "Dancing Heartbeats" about successful women in the male-dominated world of breakdancing. The premiere was in October 2023 at the Hof Film Festival, and the film was released in May 2024.