European Talent Competition

Jamie Alpherts

Nominee European Talent Competition

Jakob Altmann

Nominee European Talent Competition

Jakob was a winner of the Youth Composing Competition „Jugend Komponiert Bayern“ every year from 2020 to 2022.
In 2023, he completed a one-year internship with film composer Martina Eisenreich, taking on tasks such as music production and orchestrating the SWR radioplay „Geschichten aus der Vorstadt des Universums“.
Besides his university studies, Jakob's other current projects include music for a theatre production of the August Everding Academy and scores for student films of the HFF Film University.

Luis Cantú

Nominee European Talent Competition

Melanie Gäb

Nominee European Talent Competition

Melanie Gäb is a sound designer from Germany and a music instruments enthusiast. She learned her first instrument, the piano, when she was 6 years old and later discovered her love for instruments and sounds. By the age of 18, she had collected around 10-15 different instruments to experiment and play with.

She soon decided to pursue a career in the audio industry and completed s bachelor's degree in 2020. Following her studies, she worked as an audio engineer in various studios, mostly for voice recordings and sound design. Alongside completing her studies and later working in studios, Melanie also worked as a freelancer, for example as a sound designer for the Arthouse short film ("Do You See What I See?").

Michael Kaspar

Nominee European Talent Competition

Michael Kaspar is a composer, sound designer and music producer based in Berlin. In March 2025, he completed his Bachelor's degree in the study programme Audio Design at the SRH Berlin School of Popular Arts. His compositions vary from orchestral pieces over electronic music to experimental sound compositions and soundscapes. In doing so, his focus is on audiovisual art and media such as short films and theatre. He was nominated for the WDR Filmscore Award in both 2022 and 2023.

Stefan Kiechle

Nominee European Talent Competition

Stefan Kiechle is currently studying Ton und Bild at the Robert-Schumann Hochschule in Düsseldorf.
He particularly focuses on composing for media, where he's worked on a variety of projects. He has also studied pop/jazz drums.

Aaron Kolbl

Nominee European Talent Competition

Aaron Kolbl is a sound designer from Oberhausen, Germany. At the age of six, he started playing the drums and later joined a band.
At the “Institut für Musik und Medien”, Aaron discovered the subject of media composition and sound design.
In addition to his studies, Aaron also works as a freelance audio technician and has worked as a boom operator for various university projects. He has also mixed the short movie "Die Reise des Antoine Eden" by Daniel Falkenberg.

Robert Landskron

Nominee European Talent Competition

Born in Frankfurt am Main, Robert started playing the piano at the age of six. He has always had a keen interest in music, with a soft spot for classical music, loving the sound of the orchestra.
Robert has produced short films for which he wrote his own scores, and from 2019 to 2022, Robert also completed a professional training course as a "Mediengestalter Bild und Ton" at the SWR.

Since 2022, Robert has been studying "Ton und Bild" in Düsseldorf, where he chose an elective course about media composition.

Benjamin Alan Kubaczek

Nominee European Talent Competition

Benjamin Alan Kubaczek is a composer, performer, and sound artist working across classical, electroacoustic, and cinematic music. Raised in Japan in a family of artists and scientists, and later living in Austria, Italy, and the USA, his multicultural background has shaped his artistic voice from an early age. He began playing the violin at age three and later became a soloist with the Vienna Boys' Choir, performing under conductors like Riccardo Muti and Seiji Ozawa.

He studied voice, organ, and jazz piano, performing everything from Renaissance music to progressive metal, and toured across Europe and India. As a conductor, he has led ensembles such as the Tallinna Philharmonia and the Orchester 1756.

Since 2020, he has focused on electroacoustic composition and is currently pursuing a Master's in Computer music & Sound Art at IEM Graz, also studying with Annette Vande Gorne. His works have been presented at international festivals such as NYCEMF, AudioArt Kraków, and Ars Electronica Forum Wallis. In 2024, he was invited for a residency at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin, where he created The Impromptu Series, a cycle of quadraphonic fixed media works. He is also active in film scoring and was nominated for the 2024 WDR Filmscore Award. His film music has been featured at Music & Cinema Marseille, Soundtrack Cologne, and ErnteSehen.

Felix Lopp

Nominee European Talent Competition

Felix Lopp is a freelance jazz pianist, composer and a student at the HMT Leipzig. He studied Jazz piano in Hannover and has worked as a live musician for the last 10 years.

In 2020, Felix I decided to study composition and piano at the HMT in Leipzig, where he developed a growing interest in cinematic music, orchestration and working with sample libraries and DAWs. 
Felix started working as a media composer for the Sat1 Daily "Spreewald Klinik" in 2024, for which he is currently working on season two. 

Gabriel Massé

Nominee European Talent Competition

Gabriel Massé is a student from France. He is currently in his first year of studying sound design at "Studio-M" in Villeurbanne, France.

Xiangming Niu

Nominee European Talent Competition

Xiangming Niu is a composer specializing in music for film, theatre, and concert. She holds bachelor's degree in Composition and Film Scoring from Berklee College of Music. During her studies, she was awarded the George Delerue Memorial Award and Leroy Southers Award. She is currently a second-year Master’s student at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam and Netherlands Film Academy.

Samuel Pfeil

Nominee European Talent Competition

Samuel Pfeil is currently a student at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater München (University of Music and Theater, Munich), where he is studying "Composition for Film and Media".

Vincent Roy

Nominee European Talent Competition

Vincent Roy is a sound designer and musician originally from France and based in Estonia since 2020.

Vincent grew up studying music from a young age at the local conservatory in France, and has since picked up multiple instruments along the way and produced music in different genres, from folk acoustic guitar to electronic ambient as well as orchestral music.

In 2022, he started a BA in Audiovisual Media at the Baltic Film and Media School of Tallinn to dive deeper into the world of sound recording and sound design for film and TV.

Vincent currently works as a freelancer on short film shoots and post-production sound while finishing his studies. He also focuses on music scoring, adding his unique touch to various projects.

Sam van Stempvoort

Nominee European Talent Competition

Sam van Stempvoort has been producing music since the age of 12, mainly focusing on electronic dance music. He recently completed a part-time music production course, as well as an audio-visual and audio post-production course. 

Lucia Vité

Nominee European Talent Competition

Lucia Vité is a composer and musicology student from Geneva, Switzerland. President of ''Gli alterati'', Lucia is active in student music life. She composes, conducts choirs and orchestras, and performs in a rock band and improvisation jams. Lucia is passionate about contemporary creation and always seeks new ways to make music. Music is my mother tongue, and I love to speak it in all its dialects.

Detlef Bothe

Filmmaker, Actor

Detlef Bothe is a German filmmaker, actor, and founder of B-Filme, established in 2001 with the award-winning underground feature Feiertag, which earned the Special Jury Prize at the Munich Film Festival for innovation and boldness. Known for his fearless, independent approach, Bothe has written, directed, produced, and often shot numerous critically recognized films, including Meine Frau, meine Freunde und Ich (ARD debut), Neben der Spur (BR co-production), and mein (Montreal & Oldenburg festivals). His 2020 documentary Kleine große Kämpfer was supported by Nordmedia and several foundations. His latest feature, Deine schöne Hölle (2023), continues his commitment to auteur-driven cinema.

Stephan Colli

Studio Manager, Sound Editor, Sound Designer

Starting out as a film sound assistant in 1987, Stephan Colli went through all phases of film scoring, both as a film sound engineer on set and in sound post-production as a sound editor and sound designer. In 1996, he founded together with Josef Steinbüchel and Falk Möller, first a GbR and in 1998 Torus GmbH, and has been managing one of the leading sound studios in NRW ever since.

With well over 30 years of expertise in the film industry, Stephan Colli has since worked as a studio manager on national and international cinema and television films, series, radio plays, games and commercials. Whether in sound editing and sound design, noise and voice recordings or in mixing, he often accompanies the works from the first to the last step and attaches great importance to the artistic uniqueness and technical demands of each project. This also results in long-standing collaborations with leading German production companies such as Warner Bros. ITVP Deutschland GmbH, UFA Fiction, Constantin Film and Bilduntonfabrik.

Since 2024, Torus GmbH has been shining in new splendour under the name toruspost GmbH and, in addition to film and series projects for broadcasters, also provides sound for streaming services such as Amazon Prime and Netflix. He was nominated for the best foreign film with soundtrack at the MPSE in Hollywood with ‘Whale Raider’ and ‘Lebanon’. Other well-known films with his participation ‘Knocking on heavens door’, ‘Desert Flower’, ‘Bubby Scholz Story’, ‘The Moving Man’.

toruspost GmbH is an officially certified Dolby Atmos Cinema and Dolby Atmos Home Entertainment Studio. Stephan Colli is a member of the German Film Academy, the MPSE, the German Academy for Television, the Filmbüro NW and the Professional Association for Film Sound. Together with Erhard Gießen, he represents Kinofreund eG.

Dascha Dauenhauer

Composer

It was clear from an early age that music would be the defining element in Dascha Dauenhauer’s life. She began composing and playing the piano at the age of five and was taught in Composition at the Moscow Music Conservatory as a child.

After her family moved to Berlin, Dascha attended at the “Academy for exceptionally gifted children and young people” and was accepted as a young student at the “Hanns Eisler” Academy of Music in Berlin. She also received composition lessons at the Julius Stern Institute.

During this time, Dascha was already composing her own pieces, and her orchestra piece “Sinfonietta” celebrated its world premiere at the Berlin Philharmonic in 2004.
In 2006 she began her diploma studies in music theory at the UDK Berlin and subsequently studied in the master’s programme in film music at the Film University in Babelsberg.

Dascha has been working as a film composer since 2015, collaborating on numerous feature films. The film Jibril (by Henrika Kull) had its premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2018, just like Burhan Qurbani’s celebrated work Berlin Alexanderplatz in 2020. „Evolution" by Hungarian director Kornél Mundruczó - was selected for Cannes International Film Festival in 2021.

Dascha can already look back on an award-winning career: in 2018 she was nominated in three categories for the German Film Music Award and won in the category „Best short film“ and „Newcomer“. In 2020, she won the inter alia German Film Award as well as the European Film Award for her music for Berlin Alexnaderplatz. In 2022 she received the GEMA Music Authors’ Prize in the category Composition Audiovisual Media and received the prestigious Best Music Award for the Series „Souls“ at the Cannes International Series Festival.

Dascha composed the music for the series The Swarm, which was premiered in February 2023 at the International Film Festival in Berlin as well as the Film Golda (starring Helen Mirren) directed by Guy Nattiv.

Most recently, Dascha has been nominated twice for the German Film Award for her scores in Islands (directed by Jan Ole Gerster) and No beast. So fierce. (Directed by Burhan Qurbani) and won for her score in Islands.

Professor Frank Döhmann

Line Producer, Executive Producer

At the moment working as Line Producer and Executive Producer for Film and Television.

Working with BOOGIE ENTERTAINMENT from 2017 to 2025 as Head of Production, developing international drama series with ZDF STUDIOS and partners from France (France Television Distribution), New Zealand and Japan (NHK).

Professor since summer 2001 to 2023 at the ACADEMY OF MEDIA ARTS COLOGNE in the subject of „creative producing” and as Deputy Rector of KHM – Academy of Media ArtsCologne from 2014 to 2018.

As CEO and shareholder of BADLANDS FILM with Lars Kraume, Jürgen Vogel and Matthias Glasner from 2009 to 2013.

As CEO of NOVAFILM and NOSTRO FILM in Berlin from 2006 to 2009.

As CEO of STUDIO HAMBURG PRODUKTION in 2005.

As CEO of COLONIA MEDIA and FIRST ENTERTAINMENT, Cologne from 1997 to 2004 Head of Production/ Executive Producer for COLUMBIA-TRISTAR Film- and Television
Production, Cologne from 1995 to 1997.

Head of Production at GEMINI-FILM and COLOGNE-FILM, supervising numerous international television plays and feature film productions in co-production with Italy, France, United States, Spain, Netherlands, Austria, Ireland, England and Poland from 1987 to 1995.

Started long time ago with his own company DR MUSCHNIK FILM & THEATER PRODUCTION based in Essen. Three feature films were produced: „My heart is overcome
with terror” (Co-Director + Producer), „Fünf Flaschen für Angelika“ (Co-Director + Producer) und „Strommberg – die letzte Nacht“ (Producer).

Frank Döhmann, born in Bochum, Germany, attended after his A-Levels Cologne University to study medical science.

Corinna Rottschy

Orchestral Manager

After studying music in schools, Corinna Rottschy studied vocals and was employed at WDR, first as a speaker and then as a broadcasting editor. She has been manager of the WDR Funkhausorchester since 2014.