Biography
Michaela Kirst was born in Koblenz on June 7, 1970. She studied history, psychology and German language and literature in Cologne and Toulouse. In 1997, she went to New York on a scholarship from the German National Academic Foundation, where she attended a program for young journalists. In New York, she then got a job as a senior producer for the broadcasting company RTL's correspondent office.
In 2004, she began working as a freelance filmmaker. She realized numerous reportages and documentaries for various television stations. Her documentary "Jesus liebt Dich" ("Jesus Loves You", 2008, together with Lilian Franck, Robert Cibis and Matthias Luthardt), about American missionaries at the 2006 World Cup, premiered at the Berlinale 2008 in the Perspektive Deutsches Kino section. Her other TV documentaries include "50 Jahre Pille" (2010) and "Brown Babies - Deutschlands verlorene Kinder" (2011), which won the RIAS Berlin Commission's Television Award (2nd place).
In 2011, Kirst began working as an editor and director at the Cologne-based production company Sagamedia. There she realized, among others, the documentaries "Tatort: Regenwald" ("Crime Scene: Rain Forest", 2011), "Himmel über Peking - Die Taubenzüchter der Altstadt" ("Champions of the Drum and Bell - Pigeon Breeders of Old Beijing", 2014) and "Die Mystik der Derwische - Eine vergessene Tradition des Balkans" (2019).
Parallel to these activities, in 2014 Kirst began working with Monica Lazurean-Gorgan and Ebba Sinzinger on the documentary feature "Wood - Der geraubte Wald" (AT/DE/RU), about the fight against illegal logging and the machinations of the global timber mafia - a topic she had already tackled in "Tatort: Regenwald". Completed in 2020, "Wood" screened at numerous festivals, such as CPH:DOX in Copenhagen and Diagonale in Graz. The film was released theatrically in Germany in December 2021.