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Yvonne Andrä was born in the GDR on May 9, 1969. She grew up in Weimar and became interested in literature, theater and film at a young age. Since she was denied the high school diploma in the GDR, she trained as a kindergarten teacher until 1988 and worked in this profession.
In 1989, Andrä fled to West Germany via Hungary, where she worked as a kindergarten teacher in Hesse and Lower Saxony. Finally, in 1994, she was able to complete her Abitur (high school diploma) and began studying psychology at the Technical University of Darmstadt. In 1998, she moved to the Bauhaus University in Weimar to study media culture; her teachers in the field of film included Günter Reisch.
Andrä made her directorial debut in 2002 with "Nelken für Reisch," a 35-minute documentary about Günter Reisch, on which she collaborated with her future husband Wolfgang Andrä. While still studying, the two founded the artists' collective 1meter60 Film together with Stefan Petermann. After graduating in 2004, Yvonne Andrä worked as a journalist for the Thüringer Allgemeine newspaper, the news agency ddp and MDR television, among others. In addition, she produced image films and documentaries for various cultural and educational institutions.
In 2008, Andrä founded the production company 1meter60 Film together with her husband Wolfgang and with Stefan Petermann. In addition to numerous commissioned productions from the cultural and educational sectors, but also for social institutions such as proFamilia, the Andräs now began to shoot feature-length cinema films.
Together they realized the documentary "The Other Europeans in: der zerbrochene Klang" (2011), which follows a group of 14 internationally known Jewish and Roma musicians from Moldova. For Wolfgang Andräs's "Pauls Schulweg" (2013), Yvonne was responsible for the dramaturgy. In 2015, the Andräs began the project "WeimarLeben", a 20-year long-term documentary film series about special individuals from Weimar, from a landlady to a YouTuber to a city-famous senior citizen.
Back in 2011, 1meter60 Film was awarded the Thuringian Creative Radar by the Thuringian Ministry of Economics as one of the best creative companies. In 2012 Yvonne Andrä was co-founder and artistic director of the Weimar film festival Trekoulor. In 2013, she founded the distribution company 1meter60 Distribution with Wolfgang Andrä.
In addition to her work as a filmmaker and producer, Andrä began working as a photographer in 2015. Her work has been featured in several exhibitions. She has received various awards for her work with young people in various film projects.
In collaboration with Eyal Davidovitch, the Andräs made the documentary "Die jungen Kadyas" (2019), about a transnational choir project in which 25 girls from Israel and Germany are to perform songs together based on poems by Polish author Kadya Molodowsky. Due to the Corona pandemic, the film did not open in theaters until the fall of 2022.
During the pandemic, Yvonne Andrä realized the short documentary "Das Virus im Dorf der Spatzenjäger", about a village in the Saale-Holzland district of Thuringia, whose inhabitants use unusual and sometimes bizarre methods to fight the virus.