Speakers

Christopher Young

Composer

One of the foremost talents in film music today, Golden Globe & two-time Emmy nominated composer Christopher Young has scored an impressive number of features in virtually every genre, all with strikingly original music. Christopher was honored to be the recipient of several awards including The Richard Kirk Award for Outstanding Career Achievement from BMI and was named #1 Greatest Horror Film Composer Of All Time by BBC Music Magazine. In 2023, Young was bestowed the high honor of being “Composer Of The Year” by the International Film Music Critics Association (IFMCA) as well as many other prestigious awards from the IFMCA over the years. In 2020, the Young scored film Sinister (Blumhouse), for director Scott Derrickson, was ranked as the scariest movie of all time.

Most recently Young has teamed up with the master of horror, Guillermo del Toro, on his Cabinet Of Curiosities series for NETFLIX. And APPLE TV+ has Chris scoring their exciting new series, Echo 3. Coming in 2022 are two studio features Abyzou & The Piper. Young had a box-office hit in 2019 with Pet Sematary for PARAMOUNT Pictures. The 2021 crime/thriller The Empty Man for 20th Century Fox/Studios let Young experiment with different musical colors to create a gritty musical landscape. Young retimed with legendary director Sam Raimi on his 50 States Of Fright series on the brand new streaming service, QUIBI. These along with over 160 more films embody the work of this prolific composer.

Other notable credits include, the spine-tingling Hellraiser, which showcased the composer’s seminal upbringing in horror; the new-techno sound of Swordfish displays his versatility; the resonant, genuine Celtic sounds of The Shipping News display his attention to detail; to the heart-pounding rhythms of Spider-Man 3 are all evidence of his willingness to experiment. Born in Red Bank, New Jersey (birthplace of Count Basie), Young graduated from Massachusetts Hampshire college with a BA in music, and did post-graduate work at North Texas State University before moving to Los Angeles in 1980. At the time, Young was a jazz drummer, a precursor to some of the edgier scores he would later complete. Soon, an introduction to esteemed composer Bernard Herrmann’s movie scores (Vertigo, Citizen Kane) opened up a new world for Young, who was unfamiliar with film scoring. “Here was someone doing everything I wanted to do. I fell in love with the music before I realized that it was written for movies”, said Young.

Though Young had built a solid reputation scoring horror and science fiction pictures, Director Jon Amiel recognized that the composer’s talent transcended genre. Amiel entrusted Young to score WARNER BROS.’ dramatic thriller, Copycat. The film and score received critical-acclaim and Amiel requested the composer for his follow-up film, the Bill Murray comedy, The Man Who Knew Too Little. Young proved that he could not be pigeonholed by genre. The professional kinship ensued, and they subsequently would work together on the FOX feature, Entrapment and later, The Core.

Young had established himself as working with the brightest and most-talented directors. Sam Raimi hired Young to score his high profile film The Gift. The relationship would continue to include additional music on Spider-Man 2, scoring The Grudge and The Grudge 2 and scoring Spider-Man 3. Young continued his successful working relationship with Raimi more recently on the thriller Drag Me to Hell.

Christopher Young says he has been blessed with his career so he gives back to the film music community. He has taught a film scoring class at USC for over ten years, a two-term past president of The Film Music Society, and the president of the Madrid Film Music Festival in Spain.

Panu Aaltio

Film Composer

Panu Aaltio is a film composer based in Helsinki and Los Angeles. He has scored more than 30 feature films, along with television series, video games, and a full-length ballet for the Finnish National Opera.

He is the only composer to have won the International Film Music Critics Association's Best Documentary Score award for every film of a trilogy: Tale of a Forest (2013), Tale of a Lake (2017), and Tale of the Sleeping Giants (2022). Tale of a Lake also brought him a Jussi, the Finnish Oscar. In 2022 he was nominated for IFMCA Composer of the Year alongside Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard, and in 2026 he received the HARPA Nordic Film Composers Award for the Netflix film Little Siberia.

Recent work includes Little Siberia (NETFLIX), 5000 Blankets (SONY Pictures), and Super Furball and the Lying Squirrel. He studied Music Technology at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki and Scoring for Motion Pictures and Television at USC in Los Angeles.

Martin Andree

Researcher and lecturer

Martin Andree teaches media science at Cologne University in Germany. He has been doing research on the dominance of Big Tech for more than 15 years. Leading German and international media, conferences and institutions regularly draw on his expertise, calling for his contributions on this subject.

In 2020, he published the highly reputed Atlas of the Digital World. He received the Gunter Wallraff Special Award for Press Freedom and Human Rights for the bestseller Big Tech Muss Weg! (2023), which has also been published in English (Big Tech Must Go!). He studied in Cologne, Munster, Cambridge and Harvard.

Freya Arde

Film composer, Guitarist and Music Producer

Freya Arde is a Berlin based film composer, guitarist and music producer known for her original scores for more than thirty film and television productions across genres including family features, documentaries, and dramas. Her music often blends classical composition with experimental guitar textures and electronic processing to create immersive soundscapes.

Her latest works include the scores for the documentary Riefenstahl by Andres Veiel and the Belgian coming of age feature Everyone’s Sorry Nowadays by Frederike Migom which premiered at Berlinale 2026.

As a solo artist, she released works for chamber instrumentations like Moon Window (Deutsche Grammophon, 2021) and her debut album E C H O (2025) which was described as “a masterclass in dynamic storytelling” (Cageriot).

Michael P. Aust

Festivaldirector SoundTrack_Cologne and Producer TelevisorTroika GmbH

Business graduate (Dipl.-Kfm.) Michael P. Aust is a German curator, organiser of cultural events and film producer born in 1965. His focal point of interest lies in the intersectionality of art forms, especially in the relationship of music and moving pictures. He heads the filmmusic festival and conference Soundtrack_Cologne that he founded in 2004 – with 850 accreditations Europe’s leading filmmusic industry event – as well as Soundtrack_Zurich since 2020. Parallel from 2014-2019 he was festivaldirector of Braunschweig International Filmfestival that grew to 28.000 admissions under his direction.

Aust has worked in the film industry for more than 25 years with producer credits for 21 feature films and feature-length documentaries, including 101 Reykjavik, Stumbling Block, Low Lights, Parallax Sounds Chicago, Eva Hesse and The Sound of Cologne, focusing on music and art. His directorial debut Can and Me, co-produced by WDR, hit the cinemas and film festivals in spring 2023. 

Michael curates exhibitions and festivals e.g. DuKunst Media Art Festival 1992, Klangvisionen sound art exhibition 1994, StadtKlangNetz conference on cultural education 2007-2014, European Film Music Day at Cannes Film Festival 2009-2016, the highly successful The Art of Pop Video exhibition (MAKK Cologne 2011, Odessa Art Center 2012, Liverpool FACT 2013), Next Level Conference on video games 2012, PLAY!CGN exhibition and conference on video games in art 2013, Digital Distribution conference 2014, BIFF Film Criticism LAB: on the Future of Film Criticism 2015, Hostile Sisters - Interdependencies of Theatre and Film conference 2016, FxM Film meets Music Festival 2018+19. His latest project is the 30-month Re-Educating Digitisation funded by Erasmus+.

He is a voting member of the GERMAN FILM ACADEMY, FILMBÜRO NW and of the WORLD SOUNDTRACK ACADEMY and Board Member of KINO AKTIV, ON NEUE MUSIK KÖLN and MUSIC FILM FESTIVAL NETWORK. He is Managing Director, Owner and Producer at TELEVISOR TROIKA GMBH, a Cologne-based company established in 1993 for film production, art events and public relations in arts.

Roman Beilharz

Composer, Multi-Instrumentalist, Educator

Roman Beilharz began his career as a jazz drummer and, even as a teenager, accompanied internationally renowned soloists such as Randy Brecker, Albert Mangelsdorff, and Roger Cicero. To put his skills as a multi-instrumentalist and composer to use, he shifted his professional focus increasingly toward the production of TV, film, and theater music after completing his studies at the Cologne College of Music, which earned him various awards at film festivals. 

With well over 30 years of experience as an educator in the field of media music (Institute of Music at the University of Kassel, HfMDK Frankfurt am Main) and as CEO of his own high-end recording studio UVASONAR, he emerged as the ideal candidate for the position of European Director of the IMMSANE network, which is meeting annually at SC. With his wide-ranging wealth of knowledge and experience as a multi-instrumentalist, composer, sound engineer, and media producer, Roman Beilharz embodies stylistic and media crossover like no other.

Barbara Berndorff

Music legal advisor

Her music clients include record labels, publishers, managers, producers, DJs and artists all of whom value the tailored advice she can give across the whole range of music industry contracts and related intellectual property matters. Her film clients include mostly authors and composers etc. Because of her wide experience in music and music law she is often involved in clearing music rights for films national as well as international. She provides composers and musicians of the music for German and international film productions and co-productions, feature films, TV-series and TV-movies with all the necessary legal advice for the film project and the neighbouring fields - like exploiting soundtracks etc. In addition she works for a foundation as a musical advisor and legal representative for music matters, as well as for independent film productions as external legal advice.

She has worked on the music side of productions including the films Pina, Perfect Days, Maria, Anselm, Treasure and the series The Empress and others. In supporting film music composers in contractual and organisational matters, she has supervised the projects September 5, Golda, Sterben, Tatami, Kein Tier so wild, Der Held vom Bahnhof Friedrichstrasse, 22 Bahnen and the series The Swarm, Das Netz among others. She is also a regular representative of composers in various German TV formats such as Tatort and Kleines Fernsehspiel and negotiates contracts with international streamers for series, feature films, TV series and documentaries. She is a member of the World Soundtrack Academy in Gent, Belgium and of the European Filmacademy.

Yevgeni Birkhoff

Composer, Music Producer, Sound Designer

Yevgeni Birkhoff is a composer, music producer, and sound designer working across media productions, international large-scale events, song production, and acoustic sound art. His musical language ranges from authentic EDM productions and Musique Concrète soundscapes to cinematic orchestral scores.

Over the course of his career, Birkhoff has created tailored music and sound design for internationally renowned brands and organizations, including Mercedes-Benz, Porsche, Electronic Arts, the Chinese Ministry of Tourism, and Emaar Properties. His sound installations have been exhibited at prestigious institutions worldwide, including the German Rock and Pop Museum in Gronau, Mann’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, and the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles.

In 2010, Birkhoff received the Peer Raben Award at SoundTrack_Cologne for Best Music in a Short Film. In addition, numerous large-scale events featuring his music have received international recognition within the event industry, including the BrandEx Award (2019), the German Design Award (2016), and The Special Event Gala Award (2015).

In recent years, Birkhoff has expanded his artistic and technological spectrum into the fields of game audio and artificial intelligence. He regularly gives lectures and workshops, sharing his expertise and innovative perspectives on the application of these technologies in music and audio post-production. Since 2025, he has served as Advisor on Artificial Intelligence to the Executive Board of the State Music Council of North Rhine-Westphalia (Landesmusikrat NRW).

Alex Black

Music producer, CEO of Sonoton

Alex Black is CEO of Sonoton Music and a highly experienced executive in the global production music industry. He previously spent seven years as Global Director at EMI Production Music (Sony Music Publishing), where he worked with management teams worldwide and led the development of renowned brands including KPM, MusicHouse and Juice, as well as overseeing sub-publishing interests.

Prior to joining EMI in 2013, he was Managing Director of Imagem Production Music, where he drove the transition from Boosey & Hawkes Production Music, created its classical library label, and expanded the company’s media catalogue, including work on major productions such as BBC News and Strictly Come Dancing / Dancing with the Stars.

Earlier in his career, Black founded the PR company Rocketscience Media, worked with artists such as Basement Jaxx, Carl Cox and Radiohead, produced music for West One, and collaborated with producer Trevor Horn at Sarm Studios in London.

Dagmar Blume-Niehage

Film Producer

Philipp Bojahr

Executive director of the NRW K3 AI.Art.Culture Competence Network.

Dr. Philipp Bojahr is the designated executive director of the NRW K3 AI.Art.Culture Competence Network. As a hub for artificial intelligence in art and culture in North Rhine-Westphalia, K3 will bring together networking, knowledge transfer, and continuing education and residency programs for artists and cultural professionals. Previously, from 2022 to 2026, he worked on the “New Media in Museums” tandem position to develop innovative approaches to cultural education: He led the Research & Digital Transformation department at the Siegerlandmuseum in Siegen while also conducting research in this field as a postdoctoral fellow at the Cologne Game Lab at the Technical University of Cologne, participating in various national and international projects.

He studied media studies and media culture at the University of Siegen and received his Ph.D. from the University of Cologne in 2019 with a dissertation on art, technology, and computer game theory.

Helge Borgarts

Composer, Audio Director

Boxed Ape

Composers for Video Games

Boxed Ape (Alistair Kerley & Frankie Harper) are a London-based composer duo specializing in music for video games and moving images. Their most recent project, The Casting of Frank Stone, a narrative horror title from SUPERMASSIVE GAMES, which released on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC, showcasing their signature blend of atmospheric tension and immersive storytelling.

Renowned for their distinctive approach to both interactive and linear experiences, Boxed Ape has earned a reputation for delivering compelling and versatile musical worlds. Their work spans expansive hybrid orchestral scores for major AAA titles to bespoke soundtracks for boutique indie projects, with expertise in production, orchestration, recording, mixing, music design, and implementation.

Other notable projects include scoring Horizon Call of the Mountain (2023), the multi-award-winning, BAFTA-nominated PSVR2 launch title from FIRESPRITE and GUERILLA; Beyond a Steel Sky (2020) by REVOLUTION SOFTWARE; and Corruption 2029 (2020) and Miasma Chronicles (2023) from THE BEARDED LADIES. Their collaborative style blends diverse musical sensibilities with a strong commitment to originality and quality.

Aisling Brouwer

Composer, Producer and Artist

Aisling Brouwer is a Dutch-Irish composer, producer, and artist based in London, whose darkly emotive scores build cinematic worlds that feel at once intimate and immense. 

Her latest score is for the upcoming Disney and National Geographic series Pompeii: Out of Time, which reunites Loki executive producer Kevin R. Wright with Tom Hiddleston. A hybrid of cinematic drama and investigative documentary, the series places audiences inside ancient Rome in the hours surrounding the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. The original soundtrack will be released through Hollywood Records on July 24, 2026, with its world premiere performance at SoundTrack_Cologne. 

As one half of AVAWAVES - signed to One Little Independent Records, home to Björk, Ásgeir, and Laura Misch - Aisling co-scores the Apple TV+ series The Buccaneers, with two soundtrack albums on Interscope Records featuring their music alongside original songs by Sharon Van Etten, Gracie Abrams, Warpaint, Holly Humberstone, and Suki Waterhouse. 

Her composing credits span film, television, and documentary for Netflix, Disney+, Apple TV+, BBC, National Geographic, and Amazon Prime. She scored Rubika Shah's Grierson Award-winning documentary White Riot and recently completed Shah's follow-up feature The Mad Dog of Europe, released in cinemas this year. Her scores have screened at Sundance, Tribeca, Berlinale, Cannes, and Venice.

Claudius Brüse

Composer

Claudius Brüse, scholarship for composition in Seattle at age 17; later graduated in Germany at the renown Folkwang-Hochschule in Essen as double major in "Composition" and "Electronic Composition". Received various awards, concert performances in Europe and USA; numerous scores for film, television and media, some CD releases and cute birthday-songs for his brother, also consulted for the MI and recording industry, lived in Los Angeles from 1995 to 2002, now in Germany, uses Zoom mostly for Yoga. Since 2007 continuous work with Hans Zimmer.

Martin Caraux

Music supervisor

Bande Originale is a French music supervision company specializing in film and television, founded by Martin Caraux in 2010.

The company supports projects from development through post-production, including composer sourcing and selection, creative supervision of original scores, supervision of pre-existing music, rights clearance, and rights structuring. This dual expertise — an ear for creative decisions and a rigorous approach to contractual and budgetary matters — enables Bande Originale to contribute both upstream, in shaping the musical identity of a film or series, and downstream, in securing its legal and financial framework.

Having started in the world of auteur cinema, the company has gradually expanded its scope to encompass a wide range of productions, from independent films to mainstream features, as well as series for leading broadcasters and streaming platforms, including Netflix, Canal+, HBO and Disney+.

Antonio Cárdenas

Artist Manager

HEARTFELT MANAGEMENT was born of Antonio Cárdenas’s desire to help artists tell their stories and realize their respective visions. With a background in music technology, he is a natural connector and weaves both technical and industry knowledge with empathy to amplify and solidify the talent that inspires him. His approach with everyone he chooses to work with is, well, heartfelt.

HEARTFELT MANAGEMENT represents the following artists: Viktor Orri Árnason, Donata, Simon Goff and Benyayer.

Antonio Cárdenas studied physics at the Universidad de los Andes in Mérida, Venezuela, specialising in particle physics with a project done at Paris 11 and CERN. He holds a master degree in Acoustics, Signal Processing and Informatics Applied to Music (ATIAM) from IRCAM and Paris 6. He has worked at ABLETON and NATIVE INSTRUMENTS, and in different projects with artists like Peaches, Jean-Michel Jarre, Max Richter and Austra, among many others.

Antonio has been a Reeperbahn Festival Delegate (2018, 2019, 2020), Berlin Music Ambassador (2022, 2023), and German Music Export Delegate (2023, 2024).

HEARTFELT MANAGEMENT is a member of the BERLIN MUSIC COMISSION (BMC).

Clémentine Charuel

Composer

Clémentine Charuel wrote the music for many films including the feature Cherry by Sophie Galibert (Nominated for U2C Music Young Talent Award in 2025), the feature film Meurtres à Mont-de-Marsan by Jean-Marc Thérin (France 3) and many more films. Her style, at the crossroads of classical and experimental music, allows her to explore rich and varied soundscapes that enhance emotion and storytelling.

As part of the music team of more than thirty major films, Clémentine has a deep knowledge of every role in the making of film music. She is now composing the score of the feature film My Happy Family directed by Alkim Özmen and attended the CASA CINE residency during the Festival de Cannes 2025.

In 2024, Clémentine became a member of the Académie des César in France, and was commissioned an overture for orchestra by the Orchestre Cologne. She has also been part of several juries such as Music & Cinema Marseille Festival 2025, Paris Conservatory’s film music class 2025 and the Sesame Composer Pass from La Maison du Film in 2024.

Daisy Coole

Composer and saxophonist

Composer and saxophonist Daisy Coole has collaborated with Tom Nettleship for over a decade, composing distinctive, narrative-driven work for screen and stage. Their title song for the TV drama The Wives was nominated for Best Original Composition for Film & TV Titles at the 2025 Music and Sound Awards, following their 2023 nomination for Best Television Score for For Her Sins. Their music has been featured in The New York Times, heard at the United Nations General Assembly, and performed live at the Royal Albert Hall in London.

Upcoming work for the duo includes a jazz-orchestral score for Sheryl Glubok’s screwball road comedy Welcome to the Fishbowl, starring Natalie Gold, Jeremy Swift and Marin Hinkle, and a collaboration with Fresno Philharmonic for a large-scale production of The Tempest in California.

Notable projects include the award-winning US feature Ask For Jane; Rohingya refugee documentary Shanti Khana, narrated by Ashley Judd; British comedy heist The Pay Day (Starz, Amazon) starring Simon Callow; and the BFI London Film Festival Award-winning short, Two Minutes.

Alongside their screen work, Daisy and Tom are writing and recording their debut artist EP, which is rooted in contemporary and spiritual jazz. Daisy serves in leadership on the board of the Alliance for Women Film Composers, has juried for BAFTA, the Ivor Novello Awards and the Music and Sound Awards, and has helped shape The Ivors Academy campaign to End Ghostwriting in the UK media composer community.

Antonio de Luca

Composer, screenwriter, film producer, editor, actor

Born in 1987 in the Golf of Naples, Antonio De Luca immigrated to Germany with his mother in 1993, growing up in Frankfurt, Offenbach, and Hanau. As a teenager, he organised concerts and readings and published fanzines covering politics, music, and film.

In 2009, he edited the book Dadas Best (NAUTILUS VERLAG) and moved to Cologne, where he built a recording studio in 2012. He contributed to numerous films screened at major festivals including Cannes, Karlovy Vary, and DOK Leipzig, discovering his passion for screenwriting along the way.

His short film Paradies (2012/13, co-written with Caroline Kox) received funding from the Film- und Medienstiftung NRW. His next short, Emil (2013), was shown at over 150 festivals worldwide, including Cannes 2014. He began collaborating with director Jan Bonny on Über Barbarossaplatz, which was nominated for the Grimme Prize. In 2014, he and Kox received a grant from MEDIENGRÜNDERZENTRUM NRW for their production company, also named PARADIES.

Highlights of subsequent years include the short Casting a Woman (nominated for the Luxembourg Film Prize 2018), work as composer and guest actor at SCHAUSPIEL KÖLN (2016), and the text-and-ensemble piece Kinks of Violence for the Acht Brücken Festival (2018). His collaboration with Jan Bonny on Wir wären andere Menschen ultimately won the Grimme Prize in Fiction in 2021.

In 2020, he co-composed the soundtrack for the TV comedy series Unter Freunden stirbt man nicht (starring Iris Berben). He has since been developing several screenplays, including Formicarius, a satire about the origins of witch burnings, and the thriller La Noblesse. In 2023, the album Overcloseness by Colorist (co-written with Caroline Kox) was released on KOMPAKT RECORDS.

Most recently, in 2026, the Elfriede Jelinek adaptation Liebhaberinnen by Koxi premiered at the 76th Berlinale, a project for which De Luca wrote the screenplay, acted, co-edited, produced the soundtrack, and designed the poster.

Nainita Desai

Composer

Emmy-winning composer Nainita Desai is a leading voice in contemporary screen music, known for bold and emotionally immersive scores across film, television and video games. Recent credits include the DISNEY+/AMC fantasy adventure Nautilus, and Bafta and Emmy nominated DISNEY+ wildlife series Secrets of the Penguins. Her work in interactive storytelling, includes the BAFTA-winning games Immortality, Telling Lies, Call of Duty and EA Originals’ Tales of Kenzera: Zau as well as upcoming AAA games, landmark wildlife series for BBC1 and premium series and films for NETFLIX and NAT GEO.

Nainita won an Emmy for The Reason I Jump and has received honours from the RTS, IFMCA, ASCAP, SCL and World Soundtrack Awards, alongside nominations for the Ivors, Critics Choice, G.A.N.G, MPSE and Cinema Eye Honors awards. Her acclaimed documentary work includes Bafta and Cannes-winning For Sama, The Deepest Breath, Sundance-winning Nocturnes and The Reason I Jump, and NETFLIX´s 14 Peaks: Nothing Is Impossible, while her scripted series credits also include Sky’s comedy drama Funny Woman, ITV crime-drama The Tower, and BBC One thriller Crossfire.

Alongside her screen work, she is an active advocate for composers and serves on committees for organisations including the Ivors Academy, BAFTA and AMPAS.

Varun Desai

Multidisciplinary artist

Varun Desai is a multidisciplinary artist and computer engineer with two decades of experience operating at the intersection of technology, interactive design, and immersive sound art. His research-driven practice investigates how technological advancements reshape human sensory perception, utilizing custom-built electronics, real-time code-based visualizations, and responsive installations to interrogate the boundaries between physical and digital spaces.

As a foundational figure in India's experimental music and digital art landscapes, Desai has championed contemporary new media practices in Kolkata and founded Synthfarm, a premier research and residency platform dedicated to modular synthesis, instrument design, and music production. Additionally, his role as director of the long-running Kolkata Jazzfest bridges global cultural traditions, fostering vital cross-disciplinary and international collaboration.

Desai’s creative methodology is anchored by a rigorous technical framework in computer engineering, software architecture, and creative coding. His artistic projects frequently leverage these skills to build highly responsive, stable cyber-physical environments, as seen in his immersive digital artwork created for Apple, his custom hardware and DIY synthesizers and his fine art pieces showcased at the historic Dhoomimal Gallery. This is further exemplified in his solo exhibition Spectre at Experimenter, which explored wave mechanics, surveillance, and multi-channel sound systems. A defining milestone of his instrument design research is Switched on India, a performance-lecture project centered around his reconstruction of the pioneering 1969 National Institute of Design (NID) Moog synthesizer. Continuing to push the boundaries of how electronic sound is generated, Desai integrates algorithmic logic into his creative practice by exploring both ends of the modern compute spectrum. His current interactive experiments range from lightweight AI sequence patches deployed on low-power edge microcontrollers to complex, web-based deep learning architectures.

Mara Deuschle

Global Sync Manager

Mara Deuschle is the Global Sync Manager for APL Publishing, where she represents the Nordic music publisher's catalogue for all types of visual media on an international level, working closely with broadcasters such as ZDF, SRF and the BBC, ad agencies and production companies. She also applies this knowledge in her role at AIMS, helping the AI music search expand its global reach using her expertise and industry connections.

Based in Copenhagen, Mara has been active in the music industry for over a decade. She started as a concert promoter and artist manager all over Switzerland before shifting her focus to music licensing in 2021 after her bachelor's in St. Gallen and master’s in Management of Creative Industries at Copenhagen Business School.

Maclaine Diemer

Composer

After graduating from the Berklee College of Music in Boston, he joined the rock and roll circus and hit the road, climbing speaker towers and playing to sold out crowds across the U.S. and Canada with several bands before entering the game industry. Now, with 18 years of experience in games, he has worked on some of the highest profile titles across PC and multiple game console generations. In 2023 and 2024, Maclaine was nominated for the Game Music Award at the prestigious World Soundtrack Awards, and in 2025 he was nominated for Best Original Score for Interactive Media by the prestigious Society of Composers and Lyricists.

Valerie Dobbelaere

Publicist, composers agent

Stefan Döring

Composer

Michael Duderstädt

Director of Political Communications at GEMA

Michael Duderstädt has been Director of Political Communications at GEMA since July 2013 and, since December 2024, has also served as Head of GEMA’s Berlin office.

In this dual role, he oversees the liaison offices in Berlin and Brussels and represents the political interests of GEMA’s more than 100,000 members.

Previously, he was Head of Communications & Media Policy at RTL Radio Deutschland and Managing Director of the online radio station the wave – relaxing radio.

After completing his studies in communication, theatre and law, he began his professional career as a media policy advisor to Dr Angela Merkel at the CDU’s federal headquarters. He then worked at the communications agency Pleon, advising companies on corporate communications, public affairs and crisis communications.

Dr. Yati Durant

Composer, Lecturer, Musician

Dr. Yati Durant is a U.S. born composer, lecturer, trumpeter and conductor. His musical background began with composition and jazz music from the age of 7. He was a founding member of the experimental jazz ensemble Honey Junkie and The Yati Durant Project Band in the 1990s. He studied with Portland trumpeter (and Grammy winner) Thara Memory before moving to New York, where he began a successful stint as a TV and film music composer. Yati holds a PhD in Composition from the University of Edinburgh along with a prestigious Konzertexam Meisterklasse in composition under the composer Krzysztof Meyer at the State Conservatory of Music in Cologne, Germany, and a Diploma in Electronic Composition under Hans Ulrich Humpert. He has also studied with George Crumb, Philip Lasser, Narcis Bonet, Lee Konitz and conducting with Jonathan Brett.

From 2010 - 2019 Yati was a Lecturer and Programme Director of the MSc Composition for Screen Programme at the University of Edinburgh. His compositions and films have received many prizes from International festivals, including a Panorama Prize at the 2008 Berlin International Film Festival for Erika Rabau – Der Puck von Berlin and a BAFA National Commerce Film Award nomination for the WDR/ARD documentary Ein Klavier geht um die Welt. 
He is a finalist of the 2009 Concorso Giovani Musicisti Europei in Aosta, Italy with his score to C. Chaplin’s The Vagabond. His contemporary compositions have been commissioned and performed in New York, Seattle, Berlin, Edinburgh, Cologne and Sao Paolo, released on CD and DVD by  FILM DIENST/NORMAL RECRODS, FILMMUSEUM MÜNCHEN and he remains an active performer of jazz, with regular appearances and recordings throughout Europe and USA. His TV and Film credits include work for WDR, ARD, HBO, MTV, DISNEY and many others. He was Orchestra Mentor-in-residence for the WDR Funkhausorchester Köln from 2021 - 2023, and currently composes, performs and directs the MSCN Film Music Festivals Academy at film music festivals worldwide.

Anita Elsani

Producer

In 2003, Anita Elsani founded the Cologne-based production company elsani film and has since successfully produced national and international film and TV productions. Since 1994, Elsani has worked for various production companies and built up the Cologne headquarters of Wüste Film West, for which she was involved in projects such as "Head-On" and "Solino."

In the early 2000s, she participated in the UCLA Producers Program and the IFS International Producing Workshop. Elsani film's first feature film, "VIVERE," screened at the Tribeca Film Festival. This was followed by "Eleanor & Colette" (directed by Bille August) with Helena Bonham Carter and Hilary Swank (world sales: Sony), "THE ALBANIAN VIRGIN" (Warsaw IFF, German Screenplay Award - Nominated) and the feature film "Operation Napoleon," produced jointly with Splendid Entertainment and starring Iain Glen, among others.

In 2025, "American Sweatshop," starring Lili Reinhart, celebrated its world premiere at the SXSW Festival in Austin.The German premiere will follow in May 2025 in the CineCoPro competition at the Munich Film Festival.

Dr. S. Dennis Engbrink, LL.M.

Lawyer

Dr. S. Dennis Engbrink, LL.M. is Head of Media & Entertainment at ZIRNGIBL Rechtsanwälte in Berlin. He specializes in intellectual property, media and entertainment law. He advises media, technology and creative industry clients, including music and film businesses, producers, composers, publishers, agencies and promoters. One focus of his practice is AI and its legal implications for copyright, licensing and regulatory compliance. His academic and professional background includes extended international experience in Tokyo, Brussels, Amsterdam and Wellington. As a frequent speaker on AI, IP and media law, and through his involvement in the International Association of Entertainment Lawyers (IAEL), he contributes actively to international debates on the legal implications of emerging technologies for the creative industries.

Claudia Fabbi

Music Supervisor

Born in 1998, Claudia Fabbi works as a music supervisor for the label and music publisher FM Records. A graduate in Communication and Marketing from Sapienza University of Rome, she developed a passion for music supervision while writing her master’s thesis on music selection processes in TV series. After eight months of experience in the music department at the movie production company FANDANGO, she joined the FM Records team in 2024 as a music supervisor and A&R for production music. In her role, she is responsible for scouting new composers and writers for in-house projects, coordinating international music productions, supporting soundtrack publishing activities, selecting music for creative briefs across film, television, and advertising, handling music clearance for specific projects, managing licensing and digital communication.

André Feldhaus

Film Music Composer

Milena Fessmann

Music Supervisor, Radio host, Producer, DJ

Since 1991, Milena Fessmann has worked as a full-time DJ (2001-2014 Radio Eins After Work Lounge, Trompete/Berlin, European Film Awards 2015 etc.) and has worked for various radio stations. Since 1997 she works for Radio Eins/RBB with her own weekly show called "Free Falling".

In 1989 she founded CINESONG and has been working as a music supervisor on more than 500 films and series.

She is moderator of several national events and panels such as the "Cartoon Movie Award"/Postdam 2002-2008, Reeperbahn-Festival 2014-23, c/o pop Cologne 2014-2024 and many more. Milena Fessmann teaches music supervising and copyright clearing at film schools such as DFFB Berlin and is advisory board member of the World Soundtrack Academy and Member of the European Filmacademy.

She founded a film production company called SUGAR TOWN Filmproduction Gmbh & Co.kg in 2011. Its first project was The Potential of Noise- Conny Plank by Stephan Plank and Reto Caduff. Fessmann is executive-producer of When Hitler stole Pink Rabbit, directed by award-winning director Caroline Link, and is co-producer of Prince of swans, as well as a few more.
Her newest documentary project Just do it- She-punks from 1977 until now about female punk and the new wave in german speaking territory from 1979-89 is currently in pre-production.

Magdalena Frau

Film producer

Magdalena Frau is an Italian media professional who grew up in Germany. Her degree in Applied Cultural Studies at the University of Lüneburg, along with an internship at the Italian broadcaster RAI, paved the way for her career in the German television industry. She has worked for RTL2, MME and SAT.1, amongst others – in editorial, programme acquisition and international co-productions, as well as a reporter and film journalist. She later took over as head of the Berlin studio at S&L Medienproduktion.

Following further training as a dramaturg and script editor, she joined Producers at Work Film in Berlin as a producer in 2020. There, she oversees fictional projects from development through to broadcast, including the series *Wir sind jetzt* (season 3), the series *Nächste Ausfahrt Glück* (seasons 1–6), *Die geschenkte Familie* and *Der Club der starken Frauen*.

Since 2018, she has been volunteering with WIFT Germany, serving as a board member from 2020 to 2025. She is particularly committed to networking, visibility and the advancement of women in the film and media industry.

Marco Gilles

Film Producer

Marco Gilles is a German producer specialising in fiction for cinema and television. His focus lies in developing narrative formats that combine emotional resonance, artistic precision and wide audience accessibility – from auteur-driven cinema to distinctive serial storytelling.

At the Cologne-based production company eitelsonnenschein, Gilles is responsible for the development and production of feature films and series. Recent credits include REMBETIS (dir. Sophie Averkamp, ZDFneo), AUFGEPUTSCHT! and LEBENSLÄNGLICH ERLEMANN (RTL+), as well as HYPE (dir. Esra & Patrick Phul, ARD Mediathek) and CLUB DER DINOSAURIER (ZDFneo). He also produced the feature film DER PFAU (THE PEACOCK), based on Isabel Bogdan’s bestselling novel, and the hybrid television feature ANDERE ELTERN – 1. KLASSE (OTHER PARENTS – 1st Grade) for ZDF.

Among his serial productions are two seasons of ANDERE ELTERN (OTHER PARENTS, Warner TV), the award-winning mockumentary DRINNEN – IM INTERNET SIND ALLE GLEICH (ZDFneo), the science-driven infotainment format WORLD OF WOLFRAM (funk), and the WDR series ENDLICH DEUTSCH! – all directed by Lutz Heineking jr., with whom Gilles maintains a long-standing creative collaboration.

His current children’s feature film JUKLI is now in production in Germany and France, co-produced with Saarländischer Rundfunk and Bayerischer Rundfunk, with OneGate Media handling world sales and Little Dream Pictures releasing the film theatrically in Germany.

In cinema, Gilles co-produced the psychological thriller ZAZY (dir. M.X. Oberg) with MMC Movies, in partnership with WDR (Andrea Hanke) and RBB (Cooky Ziesche), starring Ruby O. Fee.

An early career highlight was the two-part television drama GO WEST – FREIHEIT UM JEDEN PREIS (dir. Andreas Linke, written by Matthias Pacht), developed in collaboration with teamWorx and produced for ProSieben. The project received a nomination for the German Television Award in the category Best Mini-Series.

Gilles was also involved in the acclaimed Hungarian feature film BIBLIOTHEQUE PASCAL, written and directed by Szabolcs Hajdu, which won the Grand Prix Golden Reel, Hungary’s most prestigious film award. The film premiered internationally at the Berlinale’s International Forum of New Cinema and was Hungary’s official submission for the Academy Awards in the category Best Foreign Language Film.

As an external producer for MMC Movies, the production arm of the Cologne-based MMC studio group, Gilles has contributed to a number of international co-productions. Among them is CHÉRI, directed by Stephen Frears, written by Christopher Hampton, and starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Rupert Friend, which celebrated its world premiere in competition at the Berlin International Film Festival.

Marco Gilles is a member of the European Film Academy and teaches international co-production practices as a guest lecturer at the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg.

Simon Goff

Composer, producer, artist

Simon Goff is a British composer, producer and artist based in Berlin.

Released in 2021, Goff’s debut solo album Vale is a fusion of his classical background with fearless electronic experimentation, layered with grounded melodies, and described by The Quietus as, "a statement of both awe and intent... it's remarkable that the album marks his debut outing on his own terms". 2023’s sophomore album, Spark Like Living Mothers, is a six-track collection of immersive, textural and intuitive electronica, and a testament to his multifaceted practice.

His original scores for television include the BAFTA nominated drama series The Gold (BBC / PARAMOUNT+), starring Jack Lowden, Hugh Bonneville, Sean Harris and Dominic Cooper, and Simon is currently working on the second season of the production, as well as the forthcoming CANAL+ series Dcera Národa (Daughter of the Nation). In film, Goff scored the 2023 independent Czech feature We Have Never Been Modern for which he was nominated for Best Score at the Czech Lion Awards. More recently, he composed for Vlny (Waves) which documents the role of Czech radio during the Prague Spring of the 60s, and which saw Simon work with the Czech National Radio Orchestra on the soundtrack.

He has worked with some of the world's most acclaimed musicians as a collaborator and a sound engineer including Hildur Guðnadóar on Joker and Chernobyl, both of which earned him Grammy Awards, as well as Jóhann Jóhansson and Apparat.

A classically trained violinist, Goff has performed internationally with the likes of Peter Broderick, Federico Albanese and Xiu Xiu and has performed at Funkhaus, Berlin, the South Bank Centre, London, Elbphilharmonie, Hamburg, and CTM Festival in Berlin. His live performances have cemented his reputation as an innovator of the genre. Layering performance samples of electronics and live violin, he creates a textured and epic expansion of his recorded works.

"Goff is expert at exploring the interface between organic, analogue tactility and the hinterland of treated, synthetic sound." Loud & Quiet

Sonia Gonzalez

Film director

Born in Toulouse in 1980, Sonia Gonzalez lives in Bordeaux. Between various stays of varying lengths in Paris, following her studies in German and French-English journalism, she spent several years abroad: Trier, Bristol, Berlin, and New York. There, she participated for a year in a documentary arts residency based in Brooklyn, Union Docs, and directed her first short film, Desperately Seeking Stagg Girls, a highly subjective investigation in the South Williamsburg neighborhood, following the imagined trail of a girl gang active in the 1980s.

Passionate about feminist issues and alternative cultures, she co-wrote the film Princesses, Pop Stars, and Girl Power (directed by Cécile Denjean, ARTE) and directed a documentary on the feminist punk movement Riot Grrrl, Riot Grrrl: When Girls Took Power (ARTE). She also directed a web series on the role of girls in video games, Les filles aux Manettes (Arte Creative). In 2022, her film Des femmes face aux missiles traces the history of the all-female Greenham Common Peace Camp in Thatcher’s England. Selected for several festivals (FIPADOC, Femmes en résistance) and broadcast in France (ARTE), Switzerland, Belgium, and Japan, it notably won the Terre(s) d’Histoire Award at Figra 2022 and the Special History Award at the Luchon TV Festival in 2023.

In 2024, she co-directed with Christine Tournadre International Adoption: A Global Scandal, which aired in France (ARTE), Switzerland, and Belgium—an investigative documentary exposing the systemic nature of fraud in international adoption.
In her latest film, Il suffit d’écouter les femmes (FRANCE 5), produced by the INA as part of a major archival project on clandestine abortion, she gives a voice to women who had abortions before the Veil Law. The film won the Autrement Vu Award at Figra 2026.
Returning to the realm of music documentaries, she has just directed Kate Bush, a timeless genius for ARTE.

Martin Häne

Music Producer

Martin Häne is a publisher of currently 8 different music production labels for both major distributors as well as independents.

Before becoming a music publisher, Häne worked for 10+ years as composer for both production music as well as bespoke music.

His credits as a composer include "Fack ju Göhte 2", "Melrose Place", "Bring it on" (Universal), various Lion's Gate Films (Warrior, Frankenhood) as well as Commercials and TV Series on networks such as ABC, NBC, CW TV, among others.

As a Publisher, his mission is simple: To create Production Music with character, and helping media creators to tell their story.

You may find out more here: www.martytone.com

Natalie Hausmann

Musician and composer

Natalie Hausmann is a cologne based composer for filmmusic, theatre & concert music and an award winning jazzmusician.

Since 2020 she has composed original scores for modern TV series e.g. the Amazon Prime Original „Perfekt Verpasst“ („The perfect Miss“ ) //„Start the fck up“// „ETHNO“ and more, as well as for crime drama like „Wilsberg“.
Recently the Young Adult comedy series "Mermaids to Lovers" (Warner, RTL+) premiered in June 2026 @ Seriencamp Cologne. For this score, she has combined Neo - 80ies sounds with Indie Rock and the Original Score Album is now available.

The latest credit for theatre work is „Pinocchio“ for Schauspiel Düsseldorf and her composition „Shape ONE“, recorded with Deutsches Filmorchester Babelsberg, will be released in Winter 2026. Currently she is working with UFA Fiction.

Although she considered to study cinematography after school, she went with her overall passion for music, graduating with a masters degree in jazz saxophone, piano and woodwinds @Folkwang University of Arts, Germany, playing afterwards in dozens of ensembles between Jazz, Pop, Classical music and Avantgarde.
She also was prizewinner of "Jazzwerkruhr" and scholarship holder for the "Banff Centre of the Arts" (Canada), "GVL" and "Initiative Musik".

Her score is characterized by strong melodic themes, textured minimalism and energetic rhythms arranged for acoustic & synthetic instruments and during her film music journey she deeply fell in love with acoustic strings and felt piano, as well as sample based HipHop and modern Synth Soundscapes.

"Rarely has one experienced such a balanced and yet exciting world of sound"
Jazzpodium

Thomas Hanz

Head of the Musikschule.digital.NRW network

Thomas Hanz ist Referent für Digitalisierung beim LVdM NRW und Leiter des Netzwerks Musikschule.digital.NRW. Seine Schwerpunkte sind digitale Transformation und KI in der Musikschularbeit. Für den VdM verantwortet er die Fortbildungsinhalte für die Führungskräftequalifizierung im Bereich Digitalisierung. 2022/23 setzte er die Digitalisierungsoffensive der NRW Landesregierung an öffentlichen Musikschulen in NRW um. 

Zuvor entwickelte und erprobte er an der Folkwang Musikschule Essen digitale Unterrichts- und Kommunikationsformate. Thomas Hanz studierte Gitarre in Essen, Hannover und Köln, konzertierte europaweit und war als Dozent, Komponist, Arrangeur sowie künstlerischer Leiter des Gitarrenfestival-Ruhr tätig und hatte einen Lehrauftrag für Gitarre an der Folkwang Universität Essen.

Lucie Herrmann

Director, Author

After completing her studies of literature and sociology at the Goethe University in Frankfurt and working as assistant director of two films for Kleines Fernsehspiel (ZDF), Lucie Herrmann has become a freelance author.

She has made many films for television: HR, WDR, NDR, ARTE and 3-Sat-Kulturzeit, e.g. the features Girls are great! - Women in rock music, Just be a pair of eyes. The artist Jeanne Mammen, Victorious red over Bitterfeld, the history of the Wolfen Film Factory. Vices, a film essay on W. Sofsky's "Sociology of Vices."

Numerous short documentaries, amongst others about Guiseppe Becce, Billie Holiday, Adolphe Sax, Seraphine Louis, Annemarie Schwarzenbach, Unica Zürn, were made for the program Rückblende (WDR).

For the "International Women's Film Festival Dortmund" she produced a compilation film about the change in the image of women in film: Of Screen Goddesses and Cybergirls. With her documentary film Oh Horn! she created a cinematic monument to the late Frankfurt jazz trombonist Albert Mangelsdorff and now dedicated her second, self-produced jazz film to jazz-saxophonist Christof Lauer.

Lucie Herrmann will be present during the film screening of her film Taking To You. Christof Lauer (Sax), together with the main character Christof Lauer, who will also play a concert after the film screening.

Irene Höfer

Film producer

Höfer is a producer of successful film portraits, including those of Michael Caine, Nan Goldin, Emma Thompson, Paul Auster, and Siri Hustvedt. As managing director of Medea Film Factory, she develops documentary, fictional, and serial projects using innovative narrative and cross-media storytelling forms. Irene Höfer is a member of the German, Austrian, and European Film Academies, chair of AG DOK, and a member of PROG. In 2026, she was awarded the German Film Prize (LOLA) for Best Documentary Film.

Medea Film Factory produces national and international film and TV productions. Current projects include Siri Hustvedt - Dance Around the Self (directed by Sabine Lidl, Berlinale 2026), Henry Fonda for President (directed by Alexander Horwath, Berlinale 2024, Special Jury Prize at BAFICI, Diagonale Editing Award 2025), the VR production ROAMance (directed by Ibrahim Quraishi & Stanislaw Liguzinski), and the feature film Reif (directed by Paula Romy Riemann).

Other productions include Rebellinnen – Fotografie Underground Ddr (RBB/ARTE), America – Land of The Freeks (Berlinale Special 2018), the multi-award-winning documentary Endstation Bataclan – From Bus Driver To Attacker, and the artist portrait Nan Goldin – I Remember Your Face, which has been shown at festivals including CPH:DOX, the Zurich Film Festival, Art Basel Miami, and the Festival of German Films New York.

Florian Hollerweger

Professor of Digital Innovation · Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln

Florian Hollerweger is an Austrian artist and scholar of sound, with a focus on computationally mediated aural experience in sonic arts practices such as live coding, sound installation, data sonification, or electroacoustic music composition.

Since 2023, he is Professor of Digital Innovation at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln, where he and his colleagues are currently establishing the Zentrum für Künstlerische Forschung & Digitale Innovation (ZKD). From 2017 to 2023, Florian served first as Assistant, then Associate Professor of Audio Arts & Acoustics at Columbia College Chicago. He was Lecturer in Music Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) fom 2013 to 2017 and at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, from 2011 to 2012.

Florian holds a PhD from the Sonic Arts Research Centre (SARC) in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and a Diplomingenieur from the Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustics (IEM) in Graz, Austria.

Bob Humid

Composer, Sound Designer, DJ, Label Manager, Music Journalist

Bob Humid (actual name: Robert Edwin Feuchtl Mato) is a restless musician & DJ, a meticulous producer of experimental radio plays and indie film soundtracks, a sound designer, music journalist, label manager (Serve & Destroy Records) and a mixing- and mastering studio-operator routed in Cologne's electronic music scene. His musical creations, ranging from UK-influenced electronic breakbeats to valiant electronica, occasionally high-five the realms of club music, techno and pop. He was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, but grew up most of the time in Germany, where he was an originator of numerous activities in the City´s alternative underground music scene starting in 1989 as co-founder and member of the german Elektro/EBM-group Der Liederkranz. In addition to testing pro audio equipment as a tech editor for such mags as GROOVE, SOUND & RECORDING and KEYBOARDS, he is also known to be an acribic mixing-engineer, an obsessive remixer and a producer with a violent heart for detail and object-based hyperediting. In 2011, he won first prize for the song Festung Europa at the SPEX protest song competition alongside the Leipzig-based synth-pop band Brockdorff Klangabor, and as a result even made it onto The Guardian’s list of the world’s best songs on the subject of refugees. Currently he is alo organising the cologne-based GMCC (Game Music Composer Concerts) along with visual artist Uli Sigg.

Federico Isasti

Composer, Musician and Developer

Federico Isasti is an argentinian composer, drummer, improviser and software developer based in Germany.

Studied classical percussion, holds a degree in jazz drums from “Manuel de Falla” conservatory and is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Electronic Composition at the HfMT Cologne.

He released more than 20 albums, touring with musicians from Latin America, USA and Europe, composed multimedia pieces and music for dance pieces and participated in residencies in USA, Canada and Switzerland. He won the Second (2023) and the First Prize (2018) at the National Music Competition of the FNA (Argentina) as a composer and a drummer.

Emilio Jotter

Student at the Cologne University of Music

Emilio Jotter has been studying for a teaching qualification at the Cologne University of Music for four years, specialising in composition, performance and artistic research.

In his projects, he experiments with interdisciplinary methods to explore new forms of musical experience. At the Centre for Artistic Research & Digital Innovation (ZKD), he has taken various courses with Florian Hollerweger and Anna Schürmer on music and AI, live coding and EDM.

Olaf Karnik

Cultural journalist, editor, writer and director

After studying media studies, German language and literature, and political science at the University of Cologne, Olaf Karnik (1962) worked as a journalist and editor for various daily newspapers (e.g. Neue Zürcher Zeitung, taz), music magazines (Spex, Intro), radio programmes (WDR 3) and television features (3Sat, ARTE).

He has published books and book chapters on soul and African-American pop music, reggae in Germany and music videos with publishers such as Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Suhrkamp and Ventil.

From 2009 to 2013, Karnik worked as a lecturer on the Popular Music and Media course at the University of Paderborn, as well as a visiting lecturer at various universities.

Later he has worked as a writer and director for cultural features and radio programmes (including Deutschlandfunk, SWR 2 and WDR 5) and has also been teaching German in DaZ and DaF courses since 2017. He has been working as a DJ (e.g. The Soulful Shack) since 1985.

Bettina Kee

Composer, multi-instrumentalist and arranger.

Bettina Kee is an Italo-French composer, multi-instrumentalist, and arranger. With over two decades of experience spanning feature films, documentaries, short films, theater, and music production, she has collaborated with directors such as Benoît Forgeard, Sophie Letourneur, Pascal Bonitzer or promising young director Orian Ziad. Early in her career, she worked as assistant to Michael Galasso, notably on the film Séraphine, which received the César Award for Best Original Score.

Her artistic universe blends orchestration with analog and modular synthesizers, piano, wind instruments, and vocals. She has received several distinctions, including the 2025 CNM Film Music Composition Grant or the Musique en Courts competition in 2004.

Beyond cinema, she has an extensive discography in the field of jazz and improvisation and with her own project under the stage name of Ornette. She has collaborated with artists such as Alain Bashung, Sylvain Rifflet, Fred Pallem, Joris Delacroix or Nôze. Since 2021, she is actively engaged in promoting equality and diversity in the music industry through her role at SACEM and her involvement with the collective Troisième Autrice, advocating for women composers in film.

Jens Kindermann

GEMA Operation Domain Manager

Jens Kindermann ist seit 1996 bei der GEMA tätig. Als Operation Domain Manager Production verantwortet er die Bereitstellung von Nutzungs- und Produktdaten als Grundlage für die Tantiemenverteilung. Er ist Experte im Bereich Metadaten, Audio Monitoring und Audiovisuelle Produktionen.

Marie Kirschstein

Senior Advisor at Film- und Medienstiftung NRW.

Marie Kirschstein is Senior Advisor Festival Funding and Cultural Affairs at the Film- und Medienstiftung NRW, where she oversees festival funding and works on cultural policy and strategic initiatives that strengthen North Rhine-Westphalia's film and media landscape. In her role, she collaborates closely with film festivals, industry partners and public institutions to support cultural exchange, talent development and the visibility of audiovisual works. Before joining the foundation's funding department, she worked in strategic communications at the Film- und Medienstiftung NRW and previously as Communications and Marketing Manager at the German Journalists' Association (DJV NRW). Kirschstein holds degrees in Media and Social Sciences from the Universities of Bayreuth and Siegen. Alongside her professional work, she has long been committed to democracy, media and culture through various voluntary initiatives

Cornelia Köhler

Author, Presenter, Director

Cornelia Köhler has been working in the media industry since 2000, first as a producer of the sitcoms "Das Amt" and "Bernds Hexe" for Cologne-Gemini film, later in the script development for Constantin Entertainment. Since 2007 Cornelia Köhler has been an independent script-writer for cinema, TV formats and stage. Together with the composer Camille van Lunen she wrote the youth operas “Talitha, come back!” and „Amal-over the Wall“ in 2020 and the Oratorio „Schrei, Hiob, Schrei!“ in 2021.

She is editor of the magazine “Rundbrief” (Film-und Medienbüro Niedersachsen) and director and scriptwriter for a series of documentaries about German Literature. Her latest piece in the series is a media pack on Heinrich von Kleist’s "Der zerbrochne Krug". She worked as dramaturge for the feature films “Low Lights” (produced by dagstarfilm, 2009) and “Pattys Catchup” (dagstarfilm, 2011), as co-writer for the German-Lithuanian documentary “Liebe Oma, Guten Tag” (dagstarfilm, 2017, supported by the Film- und Medienstiftung NRW.). From 2009 to 2023, she was a board member of ‘Women in Film and Television Germany’

Hansjörg Kohli

Composer and Educator

Hansjörg Kohli is a composer, educator and music supervisor working out of Munich. He grew up in Switzerland, studied film scoring and jazz piano at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, USA and the University of Performing Arts in Munich. He started out as an orchestrator for a variety of film projects. Later on, he became the head of the film music supervision department at the German National Television ZDF in Mainz. For several years now his focus has shifted back to composing for film and media. Among his more recent works are the scores to “Ein Ticket zur Bescherung” (upcoming Holiday special), “Ostfriesennacht” (premiered at the International Filmfestival Emden-Norderney), “Der Spalter” (premiered at the Munich International Film Festival) and over 12 episodes of the crime series “Cologne P.D.”.

He is a professor in the film scoring program at the Munich University of Performing Arts and also a lecturer for the Master of Arts in TV Journalism/Documentary program at the University of applied Sciences and Arts in Hannover.

Ulla Kösterke

Sound Mixer

In 1983 Ulla Kösterke started her film studies at German Film and Television Academy Berlin (DFFB). There she spezialized in sound. Before she graduated in Journalism, German Literature and Sociology from the Freie Universität Berlin. (FU Berlin). Since 1989 she worked as Production Sound Mixer on Feature Films and Documentaries, for Cinema and TV and shot more than hundred films all over the world. Many of them won national and international awards.

Ulla Kösterke is teaching Filmsound at German Film and Television Academy (DFFB) and Met Film School Berlin.

She is member of German Film Academy e.V., ProQuote Film and Filmtonfrauen e.V.

Caroline Kox

Composer, film director and producer

Caroline Kox, aka Koxi, is a German-Luxembourgish composer, director and producer. After her first experiences in an improvisation workshop for aspiring actors in London, she studied screenwriting and feature film directing at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne, where several short films were made under her direction.

Following her diploma, she was invited by an international jury led by Andrzej Wajda to the prestigious EKRAN Masterclass at the Wajda School of Film Directing in Warsaw. Since 2013, Kox has been working as a freelancer in Cologne. Together with Antonio De Luca, she founded the production company PARADIES in 2014, which was accepted into the Media Founders Grant programme of North Rhine-Westphalia. As a producer, she won the Golden Lola in 2016 for the film Ein Aus Weg by Simon Steinhorst & Hannah Lotte Stragholz, which made it onto the OSCAR shortlist.

In 2015/16, she co-wrote the screenplay for Casting a Woman with Antonio De Luca, which was produced by AMOUR FOU that same year and nominated for the Luxembourg Film Prize in 2018.

As a composer, she works alongside Antonio De Luca on numerous cinema and TV productions, including Tatort and Polizeiruf. In 2021, she won the Grimme Prize for the film score of the revenge thriller Wir wären andere Menschen, directed by Jan Bonny. The experimental film Sirens by Ilaria Di Carlo, produced in collaboration with Schuldenberg Films, won numerous international awards, including the Grand Prix at the Torino Film Festival. In 2024, Kox is nominated for the German Film Prize as composer alongside the team of Vergiss Meyn Nicht, and for the film Immaculata by Kim Lea Sakkal, for which she also composed the music with Antonio De Luca, she accepted an invitation to the 77th Cannes Film Festival. In 2025, she directed her first feature film Liebhaberinnen, loosely based on the novel of the same name by Nobel laureate Elfriede Jelinek, which celebrated its world premiere at the 76th Berlinale.

Dr. Anselm Kreuzer

Composer

Anselm Kreuzer began playing the Cello at age 9 and soon discovered composing as his major passion. Already back then he combined the classical approach with modern sounds. After finishing school he studied musicology, media science and phonetics at the Cologne University and achieved a Ph.D. with a dissertation on Film Music. During his time as a student, he received several assignments for media compositions, especially in the field of radio and television. Now, he is a designated specialist for TV title themes, station IDs, scores for series and TV drama as well as music for new media and advertising.

Anselm also has an oeuvre of more than 1000 internationally successful production music titles. Among the magazine and news shows he has composed for are Weltreisen (ARD), Check Eins - Neuneinhalb (ARD), Die Chefin (ZDF), Die lustigsten Schlamassel (RTL), Lebensläufe (MDR), RBB UM6 (RBB), ZIBB (RBB), Täter Opfer Polizei (RBB). He recently scored for TV series like Küstenwache, Kripo Holstein - Mord und Meer (ZDF), Rosenheim-Cops (ZDF), In Aller Freundschaft (ARD) and documentaries like Natur Exklusiv (BR).

He is co-founder of the production music library MUSIC SCULPTOR. Whether symphonic orchestra or electronic approach - Anselm has a passionate faible for emotional, narrative and often catchy thematic music that merges with moving pictures and stories. He often transcends the borders between composition and sound design. He is also engaged in several professional associations. He is president of the German Composers Club and board member of the European Composer and Songwriter Alliance (ECSA). 

Cécile Lacharme

Composer, Cellist

Her music creates immersive sound landscapes, between neoclassical and contemporary textures, that are both soft and powerful, where time expands. Alone on stage, with her pedalboard, she superimposes loops and sonic layers with a 360° sound system, offering an absorbing and cinematographic experience.

From the still horizon of a lake to the might of a storm, Cécile Lacharme subverts her instrument to craft an instrumental journey inspired by her wanderings and encounters, to be found in her first instrumental album in the spring of 2026.

Zhiyun Lan

Student for Musicology

Zhiyun Lan is a Master's student in Musicology at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln (HfMT Köln). She studied Art Education with a focus on Music at East China Normal University in Shanghai and worked as a music teacher before continuing her studies in Germany. Her interests include music and society, intercultural music research, digital musical practices, and the growing role of artificial intelligence in music. She is particularly interested in how emerging technologies influence musical creativity, learning, and listening experiences.

Nathan Larson

Composer

Nathan Larson cut his teeth in the DC punk scene of the 1980s with the seminal hardcore band Swiz. After relocating to New York City in 1989, Nathan joined Shudder To Think, who jumped from DISCHORD Records to EPIC in 1992 and enjoyed a wild run of touring (opening for Pearl Jam, Foo Fighters, Fugazi, Smashing Pumpkins as well as Lolapalooza 1994) and recording (1994s Pony Express Record is experiencing a reassessment, having recently gotten a coveted 9.1 score from Pitchfork), and 1997’s First Love Last Rites included collaborations with buddy Jeff Buckley, Liz Phair, X’s John Doe, Cheap Trick’s Robin Zander, and soon to be wife Nina Persson of the Cardigans. 

After a solo album (1999’s Jealous God) Larson dug into film scoring in earnest. To date Larson has made music for upwards of 70 films, documentaries and TV series, including titles like Boys Don´t Cry Todd Solondz’s Palindromes and Storytelling, Luka Moodysson's Lilja-4-Ever, The Messenger, Stephen Frears Dirty Pretty Things, Margin Call and The Skeleton Twins. Recent projects include HBO’s The Lion Queen. 

In 2010, Nathan learned to meditate in the mantra-based Vedic tradition, and would become a teacher of this modality in 2021. 

In 2015 Nathan, wife Nina Persson and son Nils moved back to Nina’s native Sweden, where Nathan co-developed the Lumen Project a format that re-contextualized concert into ritual. Since 2018 Lumen Project has held events in Eric Ericson Hall in Stockholm, a decommissioned church on the Skeppsholmen island in the middle of Stockholm. Inspired by LaMonte Young and Marian Zazella's Dream House, Lumen Project offers a unique, non-religious format where art, music and reflection merge into transformative experiences. 

We create durational concerts of continuous sound, with seamless transitions, immersive lights and visuals, no stage, no applause, with audience members free to lie down, rest or move. 

LUMEN PROJECT began operating internationally as well, present in Beirut, Lebanon and Husavik Iceland. 

In 2025 Larson and family returned to New York City. Now the Lumen Project format enters a new chapter as Lumenyc , in conjunction with SOS. 

He continues his work in film. Shudder to Think is preparing a new album for early ’27 release, and will be touring extensively beginning Fall 2026. 

Andrea Lässig

Music Supervisor, Musician

Andrea Lässig has studied music tuition and french horn in Munich, followed by music journalism at the National Academy for Music and Theater.

She has been working in music consulting at BAYERISCHER RUNDFUNK for 14 years and has been part of the Sync & Licensing team at SONOTON Music - the world’s largest independent production music library - since November 2025.

Christof Lauer

Musician, Saxophonist

Since the 1970s, Christof Lauer has demonstrated his virtuosity, originality and versatility on his instrument, the saxophone, in a wide variety of ensembles, whether in duos, trios, quartets, quintets or with the NDR Big Band.

The son of a vicar from Melsungen began taking piano lessons at an early age and initially played the cello before switching to the saxophone. He has performed with Carla Bley, the United Jazz+Rock Ensemble, the Volker Kriegel Band, the HR Jazz Ensemble and, since the early 1990s, the NDR Big Band, which has led him to commute between Hamburg and his home in Frankfurt.

Other big names with whom Lauer has collaborated include Joachim Kühn, the Mangelsdorff/Dauner Quintet, Jens Thomas and many others – throughout, the saxophonist has retained his musical curiosity and his appetite for risk.

His awards include the ECHO Jazz for his album Petite Fleur (2015), the Hessian Jazz Prize (2005), the Annual Prize of the German Record Critics (1990, 1996 and 1999), Choc de l’Année (France) and the Jazz Prize of Südwestfunk (1986).

Christof Lauer and the director of the film Taking To You. Christof Lauer (Sax), Lucie Herrmann, will be present during the film screening and for the concert after the film screening.

Birgit Lechtermann

Broadcaster, host, and producer

Birgit (Biggi) Lechtermann began her radio and TV career in 1983 at Radio Luxembourg, where she trained as an editor and host. Until 1993, she hosted daily programs such as "Guten Morgen Deutschland," the two-hour lunchtime show, and "Liederlotto." In addition to her radio work, she hosted various shows on RTL plus and moved to ZDF in 1985.

For ten years, she hosted the major game show "1,2 oder 3" for ZDF/ORF/SRG. She also hosted the technology magazine show "Technik 2000" (ZDF) and the family show "Mit dem Kopf durch die Wand" (ZDF). Starting in 1993, she hosted 300 episodes of the daily quiz show "Trivial Pursuit" for VOX. For Super RTL, she created and hosted the game show "Die Super-RTL-Familie."

In 1997, RTL entrusted her with the primetime show "Small Talk." She also hosted the talk show "Birgit Lechtermann" for TV-NRW. A native of Gütersloh, she developed the TV series "Wir testen die Besten" for KI.KA and ARD, which won the "Goldener Spatz" award in the entertainment category. Her CD "Zur Schule – aber sicher" went gold, platinum, and double platinum.

She received the "Human Award" from the Kluge Foundation at the University of Cologne. She has since published five books. In 2018–2019, Birgit Lechtermann helped launch the ARD morning show "Live nach neun" and co-hosted it with her colleagues on a rotating basis.

For health TV, she developed various health-related programs, which she both edited and hosted. For Radio 700, she hosted the three-hour Sunday show "Lechtermann Live", for which she is also the editorial director. Many celebrities appear as live guests on this show.

For Endemol Entertainment and Ufa Entertainment, she developed programs for many years and served as the editorial director for various shows.

She currently produces various documentary formats for streaming services and linear TV.

Catherine Lieser

Managing director of bvft

Catherine Lieser is the managing director of the German Association for Filmsound Professionals (Berufsvereinigung Filmton e. V, bvft) that is representing the interests of Filmsound Professionel towards clients and politics.

She studied at the University of Television and Film and is a member of the board of Women In Film And Television.

Sjoerd Limberger

Composer

Sjoerd Limberger is a Dutch composer based in Amsterdam. He has worked across film, television, games, and brands around the world, with credits including ARMANI and NIKE, and upcoming arrangements for the Trombone Champ: Unflattened DLC.

His approach is rooted in narrative, he learned to experience music through the stories his parents told alongside it, a quality that runs through everything he creates. He values the human element above all: the raw energy of a recording session, the spontaneous moment a musician brings something unexpected, and the way inspiration can shift a piece entirely. Whether scoring a game world or a cinematic moment, he builds music that carries emotional weight and leaves room for the listener's own interpretation.

Helienne Lindvall

Composer, singer, writer, music industry expert

Helienne Lindvall is the President of the European Composer & Songwriter Alliance (ECSA), as well as an award-winning professional songwriter, musician and columnist. She's Board Director of the Swedish songwriter and composer organisation SKAP and the former Chair of the Ivor Novello Awards, Board Director of the Ivors Academy and Trustee of the Ivors Academy Trust. She’s also the writer behind the Guardian music industry columns Behind the Music and Plugged In, and is the former Head of Business & Songwriter relations for song data management platform AUDDLY/SESSION, backed by hitmakers Max Martin and Abba’s Björn Ulvaeus, and Director of Business Development and Artist Relations, LANDR UK.

Hailing from Sweden, she worked as a session singer, recording artist and performer in Stockholm and NYC before settling in London, where she signed a publishing deal with BMG Scandinavia and, later, UNIVERSAL Music Publishing Scandinavia. Since then she’s been working with recording artists on both sides of the Atlantic, including Roger Sanchez, Sunloverz, Big Daddy Wilson and the Dark Tenor, collaborating with award-winning writers including Jörgen Elofsson (Kelly Clarkson, Britney Spears), Patrik Berger (Icona Pop, Robyn) andSteve McEwan (Kenny Chesney, Carrie Underwood). In 2016, her song A Better Man, co-written by Andrew Fromm (Backstreet Boys, Mark Anthony) and Peter Kvint (A-ha, Andreas Johnson) made the UK Eurovision finals. Recent releases include Glass Keys, Dani Senior, Menrva and Ava Vox (Queen of the Universe).

Helienne contributed a chapter for the Swedish book Myten om Internet (The Myth of the Internet), and has written for Digital Music News, Netopia, The Musician, The Australian and STIM-Magasinet. She regularly appears on Sky News, the BBC, Irish National Radio, Bloomberg and Swedish National Radio, discussing songwriters’ rights, copyright and other music industry issues.

Jonas List-Lenzhölzer

Musician, Repertoire Manager

Jonas List-Lenzhölzer is a German musician and Repertoire Manager at the production music company MUSIC SCULPTOR.

He studied Musicology and Sound Studies at the Universities of Bonn and Cologne. After gaining his first experience with production music while working in music cataloging at Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR), he joined Music Sculptor nearly five years ago.

What he enjoys most about his work is the creative collaboration with composers.

Katja Lucker

Cultural Manager, Founder of Berlin’s Musicboard

Katja Lucker, who was born in northern Germany, has been Managing Director of Initiative Musik since January 2024. She has many years’ experience at the intersection of cultural management, music funding and the creative industries.

Her professional career began in Berlin in 1990 as an actress, before she successfully established herself as a cultural manager. Her career highlights include roles at the Kesselhaus in the Kulturbrauerei, the Karneval der Kulturen, numerous projects in the field of contemporary music, and the Haus der Berliner Festspiele, where she was involved in projects with Karlheinz Stockhausen, amongst others. From 2007 to 2012, she worked as a project manager for the creative industries as part of the European Capital of Culture programme, RUHR.2010.

She gained nationwide recognition in particular for setting up Musicboard Berlin, which she headed for eleven years from 2012 on behalf of the State of Berlin, bringing fresh impetus to Berlin’s pop music scene. In this role, she founded, amongst other things, the Pop-Kultur Festival and organised Berlin’s Fête de la Musique.

Since January 2024, as managing director of Initiative Musik, Katja Lucker has been responsible for the nationwide support of artists, live music and music businesses in Germany, and is working on the further development of music funding structures at national level.

John Lunn

Composer

John Lunn’s music possesses a wonderfully unique voice that spans a wide spectrum of musical styles. Classically trained, yet contemporary in attitude, he combines a highly intelligent and sensitive approach, with a sound that always hits at the emotional heart of a piece. Matching the highest production values with a continual desire to discover new colours and sounds, it is not hard to see why John is continuously in such high demand. He is probably best known for scoring the hugely successful flagship ITV/Carnival Films drama, Downton Abbey, for which he has received two Primetime Emmy Awards, in 2012 and 2013, a further nomination in 2014, two BAFTA nominations in 2012 & 2016. He also scored the 2019 movie adaptation which has gone on to become a massive hit, followed by Downton Abbey: A New Era and the upcoming Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale.

John’s work includes ITV/PBS/Kudos adaption of The Grantchester Mysteries which is now in it’s10^th season, Red Planet’s epic WW1 drama The Passing Bells and three seasons of Sky’s groundbreaking Jamestown about the early English settlements in America. He also scored Burton And Taylor (starring Dominic West and Helena Bonham-Carter), Shetland, The White Queen (based on the bestselling novel by Phillipa Gregory), for which he also received a Primetime Emmy nomination in 2014, and the subsequent follow up The White Princess, the reimagining of Hitchcock’s classic The Lady Vanishes, plus Sally Wainwright’s wonderful To Walk Invisible a biopic of the Bronte sisters, all for the BBC. 

Having done all 5 previous seasons, Lunn scored the NETFLIX movie The Last Kingdom – 7 Kings Must Die, the finale in an adaptation of Bernard Cornwell’s best-selling The Saxon Stories for NETFLIX. Work in the pipeline includes Shetland series 10, Grantchester season 11 and a 2nd series of Belgravia.

He has received critical acclaim for three adaptations of Charles Dickens classics: the BBC/Masterpiece centenary adaptation of The Mystery Of Edwin Drood, for which he was nominated for an Ivor Novello Award (2013), 2008’s 14-part re-imagining of Little Dorrit, which garnered both a BAFTA nomination and his first Primetime Emmy nomination, and Bleak House where he received RTS Best Score and Best Title nominations.

John’s film scores include two features for STONE CITY FILMS, Unconditional Love and Electricity, starring Agyness Dean, and the IMAX film Giant Screen Bugs, narrated by Dame Judi Dench for PRINCIPAL Film. Other film credits include the FILM FOUR/Shane Meadows feature Once Upon a Time in the Midlands (Kathy Burke, Robert Carlyle, Rhys Ifans), Get Real, directed by Simon Shore, winner of the Audience Award, Edinburgh and Dinard International Festivals, and The Wisdom Of Crocodiles, directed by Po Chih Leong for ZENITH Films. He also scored the IMAX film Legend of the Loch for director Mike Slee.

In 2010 John was awarded his 4^th RTS award for his evocative score for Sky’s Terry Pratchett’s Going Postal, which also received both BAFTA and Ivor Novello nominations.

Other works include a wonderfully innovative and cutting-edge score for the Company Pictures’ drama, The Silence; the ITV fantasy horror, Marchlands; and a wonderfully chilling Christmas adaptation of Henry James’ classic ghost story, Turn of the Screw.

Earlier television credits have ranged from the BBC’s flagship productions of Cambridge Spies (FIPA Gold Award 2003), Lorna Doone, Madame Bovary and Murder Rooms, to the CHANNEL FOUR/COMPANY series North Square, WOLRD PRODUCTION´s 12-part series Outlaws, Scottish Television’s thriller Sirens, and the SKA Films / GINGER production, Lock Stock…. His score to the BBC Screen Two Film Getting Hurt won the Royal Television Society’s award for Best Original Music. His music to Bad Blood was also nominated for an Ivor Novello Award. John scored the critically acclaimed BBC series 20,000 Streets Under The Sky, Hotel Babylon for Carnival Films / BBC (for which he was nominated for an Ivor Novello Award), and the ITV biopic based on the Moors murderers, See No Evil, as well as Sorted for the BBC. He scored The Amazing Mrs. Pritchard (starring Jane Horrocks) for the BBC, and Victoria Wood’s BAFTA award-winning drama Housewife 49 for ITV, along with Frankenstein for IMPOSSIBLE Pictures, and The Shadow In The North for the BBC. He went on to score Torn for Jeremy Gwilt and TXTV, series 2 of Jimmy McGovern’s acclaimed drama The Street for GRANADA and then completed Hotel Babylon (SERIES 4) for CARNIVAL/BBC. Further credits include Hamish McBeth, Criminal Justice for the BBC, which went on to be an RTS Award Winner 2008 for Best Original Score, Harley Street for CARNIVAL Productions/ITV1, Identity, a 6-part thriller for ITV, and Material Girl for CARNIVAL/BBC.

Billie Mind

Sound Designer, Supervising Sound Editor, Film Editor

Billie Mind is a sound designer, supervising sound editor, and motion picture editor working across fiction and documentary. After studying Sound Engineering in London and working in multidisciplinary contexts across art, music, and culture, they focus on editing and sound design for both documentary and fiction films. They are currently developing their directorial project The Hum.

Their work includes Sound of Falling (2025, Cannes Competition, Jury Prize, Germany’s official submission for the Academy Award for Best International Feature), for which they received the ICS Award for Best Editing, as well as nominations for the MPSE Award and the German Film Award for Best Sound, and the Silver Hugo at the Chicago International Film Festival for Best Sound. Further credits include We Might as Well Be Dead (2022, Berlinale, Tribeca winner), I Spy With My Little Eye (Tribeca Competition), and Im Stillen laut (DOK Leipzig, Duisburger Filmwoche). For Add your heroine, they received the Amadeu Antonio Award together with Evelyn Rack.

They are an alumna of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, the Deutschlandstipendium, and a scholarship holder of the German Academic Scholarship Foundation (Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes). In 2026, they were a mentor at Berlinale Talents and served on the jury of the 39th Peace Film Award at the Berlinale.
Billie Mind is a member of the European Film Academy (EFA), Filmtonfrauen e.V., and the German Film Academy.

Sebastian Parche

Composer, co-ceo of MUSIC SCULPTOR

Sebastian Parche is a German composer with a passion for creating captivating music that enhances storytelling. He studied "Composing for Film and Theatre" at the ArtEZ University of Arts in Arnhem, Netherlands.

Quickly, he discovered the joy of composing for nature documentaries and recording orchestras, which has significantly shaped his artistic path.

In 2015, he expanded his horizons by entering the world of production music.

Sebastian is co-founder and co-ceo of the production music company MUSIC SCULPTOR. With years of experiences in the media industry, the logical consequence was to build up a music catalogue for storytellers, including repertoire of renowned authors worldwide.

Hanna-Greth Peetson

Music Supervisor and Sync Agent

Hanna-Greth Peetson is a music supervisor and sync agent at TIER Music, an Estonian music agency that has built an active network of partners both locally and internationally over the years.

TIER Music’s sync roster includes more than 30 catalogues of Estonian and international artists, alongside a selection of talented composers. In addition, the company organises several international sync songwriting camps each year, focusing on music for advertising, film, television and video games.

A key part of Hanna-Greth’s everyday work involves managing the metadata of the TIER Music catalogue, as well as the songs submitted for various projects. This means handling a large amount of data, details and precision-driven work that is essential in being a trusted partner not only for audiovisual clients, but also for artists, ensuring their catalogue is fully prepared for sync opportunities.

Nicole Picazo

Composer

Influenced by her musical family, Nicole always had an interest in music. She began her musical journey by studying film composition at Berklee Online, where she was mentored by renowned industry professionals Enrique González Müller, Pinar Toprak, and Brad Hatfield.

Her academic pursuits led her to Fine Arts School in Mexico City in 2016, where she sharpened her skills in Composition and Music Innovation. This educational foundation, coupled with her professional experiences, paved the way for collaborations with renowned composers Harry Gregson-Williams, Justin Burnett, and Aman Moroney.

Nicole is a versatile producer, orchestrator, and arranger who has collaborated with a diverse selection of artists, showcasing her adaptability and creative range. Among many, she's worked with Major Seven, Austin Farwell, The Local Train, Duncan Daniels, PaperBoy, Sleep Theory Fabe, Tripoli and Baumarius.

Currently, Nicole serves as the Executive Producer and Project Manager for orchestra sessions at MUSIVERSAL. In this capacity, she oversees a multitude of projects, including managing universities’ orchestral recording sessions. Nicole's unwavering commitment to music production, meticulous attention to detail, and ability to cultivate creative collaborations and manage large-scale projects make her an invaluable asset to any recording endeavor.

Corinna C. Poeszus

Senior Media and Music Consultant - Mediaconsulting4u

Corinna C. Poeszus is a senior business executive with over 30 years experience in the music, digital media & film production, advertising and tv entertainment industries driven by the power of passion and an open mind and the desire to think outside the box. Corinna is a successful Leader and Manager with more than 18 years of experience in leading teams to their goals. Her experience is well rounded with an in-depth understanding of international media business management & operations, product branding, online marketing, social media, CRM, planning and controlling of marketing, monitoring, marketing & comms, monitoring of strategic marketing activities, B2B as well as B2C.
Her professional career took her from Polygram via Endemol Entertainment to Bertelsmann and Universal Publishing, Bavaria Media and many more.

Corinna C. Poeszus ist eine erfahrene Führungskraft mit über 30 Jahren Erfahrung in den Bereichen Musik, digitale Medien und Filmproduktion, Werbung und TV-Entertainment. Sie ist angetrieben von der Kraft der Leidenschaft und Offenheit, über den Tellerrand hinaus zu denken. Corinna ist erfolgreiche Managerin mit mehr als 18 Jahren Erfahrung, ihre Teams zu Zielen zu führen. Ihre Erfahrung zeichnet sich durch ein tiefgreifendes Verständnis der internationalen Medien, Business Management & Operations, Produkt-Branding, Online-Marketing, Social Media, CRM, Planung und Controlling von Marketing, Monitoring, Marketing & Kommunikation, Überwachung von strategischen Marketing-Aktivitäten - sowohl B2B als auch B2C.

Ihre beruflichen Stationen führten sie von Polygram über Endemol Entertainment zu Bertelsmann und Universal Publishing, Bavaria Media und viele weitere Stationen.

Seit 2020 Hörgeräte Expertin bei audibene Gmbh speziell für Menschen, denen Musik, Konzerte und musizieren wichtig sind.

Luisa Prinz

Director Artists & Repertoire

Luisa Prinz has been Publishing Director Artists & Repertoire at Enterprises Sonor Music Publishing since January 2023. She moved from TV rights distribution to film music publishing in 2022, which perfectly combines her interests in film and music. Her academic background includes a master's degree in American literary history from the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and a bachelor's degree in North American Studies.

Franziska Pohlmann

Director, Composer

Evelyn Rack

Film Editor

Evelyn Rack is a film editor working across fiction and documentary.
Most recently, she edited Sound of Falling, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and received the Jury Prize. The film was selected as Germany’s official submission for the Academy Award for Best International Feature. Her editing was nominated for the German Film Award for Best Editing, and she received the ICS Award for Best Editing.

Her work includes I Spy With My Little Eye, which premiered in the International Narrative Competition at the Tribeca Film Festival, and Ararat, which earned her a nomination for the Heiner Carow Prize for Best Editing at the Berlinale. Further credits include We Might as Well Be Dead (Berlinale, Tribeca Film Festival), WO/MEN (Astra Film Festival, DOK Leipzig, Thessaloniki Film Festival), and Drifter (Berlinale).
Beyond film, she received the Amadeu Antonio Prize for the interactive exhibition Add your heroine. The installation Quítame la sal de encima, created in collaboration with director Kirstin Schmitt, was presented at the Louvre.

Evelyn is an alumna of Berlinale Talents and serves regularly on juries, most recently for Edimotion and British Shorts.
She is based in Germany and holds a master’s degree in editing from the Film University Babelsberg. She is a member of the European Film Academy (EFA), the German Film Academy, the BFS (German Editors’ Association), and British Film Editors (BFE).

Charlotte Rolfes

Film director

Charlotte Rolfes was born feet first in Witten-Herdecke in April 1987. She studied directing at the International Film School Cologne from 2008 to 2012 and at the Hamburg Media School from 2014 to 2016.

Her short films have been screened at festivals worldwide, including the Max-Ophüls Festival, the Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival, the Short Film Tiger of the Cannes Film Festival, as well as at the Hofer Filmtage.

Since 2017 she has been working as a director. She has been a mentee at Into The Wild, a mentoring programme for young female filmmakers, and is particularly interested in non-conformist female characters, subtle humour, and a look behind the facade. The six-part ARD series WER WIR SIND celebrated great success in the press and with viewers in the autumn of 2023. Charlotte Rolfes' Tatort: Pyramide premiered at the Filmfest Cologne and was broadcast in early 2024. Her Tatort Köln - Colonius had premiere at the Film Festival Cologne on October 20, 2024. At the moment she is working on the Netflix series: Liebe und Chaos.

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.

Katharina Ruß

Author

Katharina Ruß studied Modern German Literature, Theatre Studies and the History and Culture of the Middle East at LMU Munich.

She then worked as a director’s assistant at the Städtische Bühnen Münster and as a storyliner at a production company.

In 2015, she graduated in Screenwriting & Dramaturgy from the KONRAD WOLF Film University Babelsberg and subsequently worked for various production companies.

She has been working as a freelance writer since 2018 and has written for programmes including Hotel Mondial, Der Staatsanwalt, Ein Fall für Zwei and Watzmann Ermittelt.

Katharina Ruß is also an alumna of the Akademie für Kindermedien. She is currently working on a series and a feature film for children, which is being funded as part of the ‘Der besondere Kinderfilm’ initiative.

Nigji Sanges

Composer

Nigji Sanges is a composer whose work covers film, television, theatre, and contemporary concert music. She studied at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Paris and Lyon, as well as at the Royal College of Music in London, and holds a Master’s degree in Music Administration from the Sorbonne (Paris IV). She is a laureate of the Banque Populaire, Meyer, and Tarrazi Foundations, as well as the Nadia and Lili Boulanger International Centre.

Her work for cinema includes the score for La Mort viendra (Death Will Come) by Christoph Hochhäusler (Heimatfilm, Arte, 2026), following Birds of America (MK2, Arte Cinéma).

For television, she has composed numerous scores for documentaries broadcast internationally on major networks including Arte, France Télévisions, ÖRF, ZDF, RTBF etc. Among them, L’Épopée des femmes pirates – Les Filles du vent (Women Pirates), directed by Laurence Thiriat, was broadcast in 2025.

Alongside her work for screen, Nigji Sanges receives commissions from leading cultural institutions such as the French and Luxembourgish Ministry of Culture, Staatsoper Hamburg, La Scala Paris…, and collaborates with renowned soloists, ensembles, and orchestras across Europe, including the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg, the Orchestre national Avignon-Provence, the Aedes Ensemble (vocal), United Instruments of Lucilin... A new string quartet commissioned by Radio France, to be premiered by the Tchalik Quartet, is scheduled for the 2027–2028 season.

Her work also extends to the stage, with recent compositions for theatre including Stolen Ground (directed by Richard Twyman) and Leuchtfeuer (The Beacon) by Nancy Harris (directed by Fábio Godinho), a co-production between the Staatstheater Mainz and the Grand Théâtre de Luxembourg.

Committed to the advancement of her profession, Nigji Sanges is part of the board of U2C (Union of Composers for Screen, Paris), where she actively promotes diversity, equality, and fair working conditions within the field. In 2023, she initiated a study on the impact of working conditions on composers, conducted by occupational psychologist Jade Tifiou.

Anna Schürmer

Anna Schürmer has been the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation Professor at the Free University of Berlin since 2026; prior to that, she was a junior professor of musicology at the Cologne University of Music and Dance from 2023.

In her academic work, she adopts interdisciplinary perspectives in the context of ‘music and media’ (Sound Studies). On a discursive level, she focuses on intersectional and power-critical approaches in music and sound research (Queer Musicology), speculative forms of music-related knowledge production (Zukunft(s)Musik: Musicking Future – Futuring Music), and auditory perspectives in artistic research (Acoustic Research).

She pays particular attention to new and electronic (club) music. Outside academia, *anna also works as a music journalist: she presents programmes, gives talks and publishes regularly in various print, radio and online media. Further information: www.interpolationen.de

Sarah Schygulla

Author, Presenter, Digital Marketing Specialist

After completing a Drama degree and a joint Bachelor's degree in Romance Languages, Literature, and Linguistics and Asian Literature and Societies, Sarah completed a master's degree in Creative Writing in Edinburgh in 2018.

Sarah then worked as a junior curator for SoundTrack_Cologne before joining, among others, the UK branch of HACHETTE Publishing as a Digital Marketing Specialist.

She writes novels and screenplays, of which her scripts for the documentaries The Sound of Cologne and Can and Me were released in 2023. In addition, Sarah is also a presenter for events and advises SoundTrack_Cologne as a consultant for film, TV series, video games, and pop culture.

Maja Stark

Project Manager

Maja Stark joined K3 KI.Kunst.Kultur on 1 July 2026 as Network and Programme Manager. Alongside this role, she conceives and coordinates EU-funded programmes at the intersection of art, culture, and new technologies at HTW Berlin, including the AURORA XR School for Artists (2023–2025) and the IUNO – Innovation Centre for Intelligent and Immersive Technologies in the Independent Arts and Culture Scene (since 2026). In 2023, she worked as a Project Manager at BGZ — Berliner Gesellschaft für internationale Zusammenarbeit. Following studies in Art History and French in Berlin and Paris, and a one-year traineeship at Deutscher Kunstverlag, she served from 2015 to 2018 as Publication Manager at the interdisciplinary Cluster of Excellence Image Knowledge Gestaltung at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. From 2017 to 2020, she complemented her professional practice by attending selected seminars in Media and Applied Computer Science.

Josef Steinbüchel

Jury European Talent Competition

Josef Steinbüchel is the founder and owner of toruspost GmbH Sound Postproduction in Cologne. He works as Sound Supervisor and Sound Designer for Feature Film, Television and Commercials.

Mirjam Skal

Composer

Anna Stokes

Anna is part of the agency team at Manners Faber, representing an international roster of composers, sound creatives and multidisciplinary artists working across film, television, game, theatre and dance.

After completing a degree in Music at Falmouth University, Anna began her career in music for media as a composer’s assistant and orchestrator, working on a wide range of film and television projects for BBC, ITV, Sky, Netflix, Paramount+, Apple TV and Disney+. Progressing into music editing and additional writing, she gained detailed insight into the scoring process, formed creative relationships across the industry, and developed a particular interest in creative project management.

Anna’s love of musical collaboration remains at the heart of her work at Manners Faber. Her experience informs her work across pitching, contract negotiation, project management and score coordination, helping her to support an exciting and dynamic roster working at the forefront of the UK’s film and television industry.

Charlotte Stricker

Music supervisor

Charlotte Stricker has worked throughout different aspects of the music industry, with a detour through book publishing, always keeping interest in music in moving media and music rights. Working as rights manager at CNR Music & Overamstel Uitgevers she later became Head of Sync at CTM Publishing, where she was responsible for the exploitation of their commercial and production music catalogue, through moving media.

In the beginning of 2024, she joined the Bell Music Supervision team as music supervisor for films and series, she has worked on different projects such as Joe Speedboot, Treat Her Like A Lady, Onze Jongens 3, Bad Boa’s, Boomers and series (all seasons of) Haantjes (Roosters), Voetbalouders (Football Parents) and Bodem (Messed Up).

Andreas Suttner

Cellist, music manager, music consultant for TV, founder of music label Klangidee

Andreas Suttner has studied Violoncello and music tuition and has been awarded as a cellist at several well-known contests. After completing his MA in Arts Management at City University of London he has turned his attention to music management.

From 2004 he is also working as a music consultant for the film department of Bavarian Television.

In 2007 Andreas Suttner founded the production music label KLANGIDEE and since then is focusing on his work as a composer and producer for filmmusic in TV, radio and web.

Nina Tanneberger

Film producer

After studying theater, film, and television studies, Romance languages, and psychology, Nina initially worked for over 10 years as a dramaturg and director in theater, including at the Stadttheater Nordhausen, the Volksbühne Berlin, the Schauspiel Bonn, and Berlin’s independent theater scene.

Beginning in 2003, she began to focus more on developing film projects. After stints at ZDF, TEAMWORX/UFA, the DFFB, and a casting and acting agency, Nina joined NETWORK MOVIE Film & TV Production Hamburg in 2004. There, as a producer, she developed and produced numerous series, miniseries, and TV movies for ZDF. In 2021, she also began working as a producer for STUDIO ZENTRAL BERLIN. Her more recent works include, for example, the sitcom Jugend by Stefan Stuckmann for ZDFneo, and the con artist comedy Fang mich doch! by Elke Rössler (screenplay) and Ester Amrami (director), which premiered at the Hamburg Film Festival in 2025.

She is currently working on, among other projects, another TV movie of the week by Elke Rössler and Carolin Würfel (screenplay), directed by Janin Halisch. Nina lives in the Bergisches Land region near Cologne and has a 17-year-old son.

Roy Theunessen

Game Developer, Game Music Composer

Roy Theunissen is a freelance game developer based in The Hague. Obsessed with making his own games since he was 12, he’s used a variety of tools and learned many of the different crafts involved in game development. After working on web & mobile games for a long time, he worked on the console game Good Job at PALADIN Studios together with NINTENDO OF JAPAN. Re-igniting his dream to make his own game, he went independent in 2021 to pursue indie game development full-time. Well, whatever “full-time” is left over after doing freelance work for studios here and there, often stepping in as prototype wizard or gamefeel expert.

A crazy scientist & rapid prototyper, he’s leveraging procedural 3d software like Houdini to create elaborate art pipelines to make ambitious games beyond what you might expect from a solo developer. A hobbyist musician (read: more enthusiasm than wisdom) he is collaborating with Sjoerd Limberger to bring to life the evolving soundtrack of his first independent game title: Odinspring.

Prof. Dr. Francisco Tigre-Moura

Academic, Researcher

Francisco Tigre Moura is a Professor of Marketing at IU International University of Applied Sciences. He holds a PhD in Marketing from the University of Otago (New Zealand) and has spent the last decade researching human response to artificial creativity. He is the editor of two books on the intersection of AI and creativity, and is currently editing a third one on AI and the abundance of creative content. He also has several publications in scientific journals, academic conferences and book chapters on AI and creativity and hosts a Podcast named AI & Creativity. You can find more about his work at: liveinnovation.org

Ilya Tolchenov

CEO Delphos

Rita Tulha

Music Producer

Rita’s passion for music was ignited from very early on and she’s become a self-taught musician producing music on a daily basis. Eventually, she got her formal music training in Lisbon which led her to an internship in Berlin where she got hands-on experience in recording music and client management in a professional environment. She has extensive experience producing exceptional on-site and remote orchestral sessions in major music cities worldwide, including London, Lisbon, Prague, Budapest, and Sydney. Since joining MUSIVERSAL in September 2018, she has been instrumental in building and expanding the orchestral department.

Her unique blend of artistic sensibility and technical proficiency allows her to seamlessly transition between intimate singer-songwriter tracks and large-scale cinematic scores for film, TV, and video games.

As producer, she has collaborated with acclaimed composer Harry Gregson-Williams and has worked on a wide range of Hollywood films, NETFLIX productions, and international commercials.

Throughout her many years of remote recording sessions, Rita has produced orchestral recordings for Sissel's Christmas EP, and the band 49 Winchester. In collaboration with Nashville producer David Kalmusky, she produced exceptional orchestral recordings for songs like Jesu Bambino / O Holy Night and Joy to the World by Kevin Jonas Sr; and Words on four-time Grammy-nominated album Remember Her Name by Mickey Guyton.

She also hosted the soundtrack string recording for Marco Beltrami's action movie Silent Night, as well as the soundtrack for Play 'n Go's Hugo Legacy.

With over seven years of orchestral recording experience, Rita oversees every aspect of the production process, ensuring that each project meets the highest standards. Her dedication to quality and attention to detail are evident in her work.

Anne Urban

Postproduction Supervisor and Lecturer

1972 born in Kassel
1993-1996 Studies Media Culture and Theatre, Cologne University
1996-1998 Professional education Film lab technician, Hadeko/ ProCine Neuss

Since 1998 Postproduction Supervisor e.g. for X Filme, Pandora, UFA, Bantry Bay, btf, brainpool, Filmservice Babelsberg, Constantin, Kordesfilm...

Selected projects:

• „Whale Rider“
• „Deutschland 09“
• „Colonia Dignidad“
• „Iron Sky“
• „Jesus liebt mich“
• „How To Sell Drugs Online (Fast)“
• „Gunpowder Milkshake“
• „Bonn”
• „Liebes Kind”
• „Riefenstahl”
• „Alte Liebe”

2000-2001 Project manager ARRI Cologne
2006-2008 Branch manager of Cinepost labs in NRW
Lecturer e.g. Kölner Filmhaus, ifs, Intern. FrauenFilmFestival, Filmakademie Ludwigsburg…
Translation of specialist book „Film Technology in Post Production" (D. Case) to German

Sophie Urquhart

Creative Director

Sophie founded Tin Drum Music in October 2011 following a previous 8 years experience in music supervision. Starting out as Creative Director of Huge Music in 2003, an in house music consultancy for WCRS/ Engine, Sophie supervised countless high profile advertising campaigns including Sky, BMW and 3 Mobile.

Sophie then joined Chrysalis Music as Creative Director of synchronisation and subsequently joined Spirit Music Group as Senior Director of Creative Services.

Tin Drum Music is an independent, full-service music consultancy specialising in creative search, negotiation and licensing across all media. They have sourced and licensed commercial music and bespoke composition for a number of award winning advertising campaigns including E.ON + Gorillaz; A Solar Collaboration, the coveted 2020 Amazon Christmas campaign ‘The Show Must Go On’ directed by Melina Matsoukas and ‘Just For The Taste Of It’ with Grammy award winning artist Thundercat.

Feature films include Stone Roses: Made Of Stone (Shane Meadows), Backstreet Boys ‘Show ‘Em What You’re Made Of’ (Stephen Kijak) and Get Duked! (Ninian Doff). Their latest feature ‘Last Swim’ (Sasha Nathwani) had it’s world premiere at Berlinale Film Festival in February 2024 and it won the coveted Crystal Bear Award for Best Film.

Tin Drum have also supervised two TV series, the multi award winning Lost Boys & Fairies which aired on BBC1 and Dreamers for Channel 4 (Duck Soup Films).

Antje Valentin

Secretary General of the German Music Council

Secretary General of the German Music Council since March 2024. Studied instrumental pedagogy (major in piano) at the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK), worked as an educator and performed in concerts as a soloist and chamber musician, Director of the Berlin-Friedrichshain Music School; concurrently, pursued postgraduate studies in culture and media management at the Hanns Eisler School of Music; subsequently served as Deputy Director of the Berlin State Music Academy, then as Director of the North Rhine-Westphalia State Music Academy; actively serves as a board member of the “Junge Ohren” network and the Jeunesses Musicales Foundation.

James Varghese

Music supervisor and music consultant at Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen (SRF)

After completing his MA in Jazz studies at the Zurich school of fine arts (ZHdK) James Varghese toured in various bands and projects through Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Italy, United Kingdom, Israel, China, India and Japan. He also produced different artists of various genres anywhere between pop, jazz, experimental and electronic.

In 2018 he founded QUIET LOVE Records with an adjacent publishing edition and has released artists with international acclaim such as Rosa Anschütz, Robot Koch and Egopusher among others.

Since 2023 James Varghese is part of the music supervision team at the Swiss national radio and television corporation SRF, consulting and curating all things music for various formats on radio, TV and online.

Linda Verweyen

Film director

Linda Verweyen is a director of docu-fictional films, specializing in social change processes driven by art. She developed the production concept of “Participatory Docufiction,” through which she raises questions as who tells the stories about marginalized communities in the film industry. Through this format, she actively facilitates the political and artistic participation of stigmatized individuals within a professional cinematic framework. She received filmawards internationally for her short films Jonna & Louis and Halima – How to Stay Strong.

Martin Villiger

Composer, focused on film music

Martin Villiger has scored more documentary films than any other Swiss composer of his generation. He has written music for more than 140 films and series, 50 advertising campaigns and over 500 series episodes. And an archive of more than 2,000 of his pieces lives in the internal library of Swiss television.

He has a habit of being first. With the DVD The Voyage (2004) he was one of the first composers in Switzerland to score consistently in 5.1 surround. Today he works in Dolby Atmos and explores where human creativity meets AI. As a lecturer at the University of the arts Zurich he mentors students on their way to become film composers.

Beyond film, Martin develops sonic identities for companies and also broadcast series. Some of his advertising campaigns feature names like APPLE, SAMSUNG, SWISSCOM, SALT, SNICKERS and REGA, alongside film and series work for NETFLIX and SRF. On stage, he founded the Culture Clash Concerts in 2022 and has performed his Emotional Composing format since 2006 - composing live in the moment, shaped by the audience in real time.

BLICK called him "the Swiss Hans Zimmer.”