Volker Schmidt-Sondermann
Volker Schmidt-Sondermann (born March 21, 1965 in Göttingen ) is a German film producer , director and screenwriter .
life and work
Volker Schmidt-Sondermann grew up as the third child of forest director Gottfried Schmidt and his wife Gertrud Schmidt in the Harz Mountains, the Lüneburg Heath and the Wesermarsch. After graduating from high school in Oldenburg, he completed his acting training at the Otto Falckenberg School in Munich from 1988 to 1992 . First theater engagements followed in Munich, Constance and Aachen. He starred in the short film Runaway , which was nominated for the German Short Film Award in 1992. In 1993, Volker Schmidt-Sondermann switched to the other side of the camera and began working as a director at the German editorial office of Kazakh TV in Alma-Ata . From here he traveled to Siberia and the former Soviet republics of Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan .
Back in Germany, Volker Schmidt-Sondermann moved with his family to Dresden in 1995 and, as a television journalist, experienced the development of public television in the new federal states. The first reports were made for MDR , and films for ZDF 37 Grad soon followed .
Through the collaboration with Tellux-Film Munich, his work also focused on religious topics. As part of the BR / ORF series Danube Monasteries , he made films about the Weltenburg Monastery and the Romanian Orthodox monasteries in the Danube Delta. Again and again he shot in the Vatican in Rome. The highlight was the ZDF three-part series Power of Miracles - The Secrets of the Vatican , which examines phenomena of Marian apparitions, miraculous healings or encounters with the devil in eight countries.
From 2003, Volker Schmidt-Sondermann was also part of the directing team for fictional series. The German class told in 13 parts the difficult start of foreigners in Germany and received an award at the Grimme Prize 2004. The cross with the writing dealt with the life of illiterate people in Germany and is realized in the Schalke Arena . From 2006 his cinematic work focused on great musicians for ARD. This is how the film Paganini's secret about the legendary devil's violinist came about . Puccini - Magician of Passion told the story of the last great Italian opera composer. In 2009 the film Robert Schumann's Lost Dreams followed . From 2007, the English royal family became a further focus . Volker Schmidt-Sondermann directed ZDF documentaries about Prince William and Kate , Prince Harry , Prince Charles and Queen Elizabeth . In 2008, the three-part series The Windsors - Triumph and Tragedy , a comprehensive look at the 200-year history of the fate of the House of Windsor.
Time and again, his cinematic work also took him abroad. For the ZDF four-parter Mongolia - The Caravan , he accompanied Mongolians and Germans from the Russian border to Karakorum for ten weeks .
His most successful films include two award-winning wildlife films. The journey of the storks follows the stork princess with a transmitter, 10,000 kilometers from Germany to South Africa through 20 countries. In 2016 he shot The Odyssey of the Lonely Wolves and for the first time narrated the return of European wolves to Central Europe.
Volker Schmidt-Sondermann, who continues to work as a director, joined the management of Ifage Filmproduktion Wiesbaden and Tellux-Film Dresden in 2014.
Since then he has been producing films for the public broadcasters ZDF , ARD , the third parties , KiKA and ARTE . Foreign reports on Kyrgyzstan, Armenia and Kazakhstan are produced for NDR / ARTE. For the children's channel series such as paper chase or the new story format Triff ... are developed and implemented. Also the documentary films for the WDR Dügün. Weddings in Turkish or slaves are part of the cinematic repertoire. Documentaries are created for ZDF Terra X , such as The Thirty Years War , Magellan's Journey around the Earth or the three-part series The Big Beginning. 500 years of the Reformation , which was awarded the German Television Prize in 2018 .
Volker Schmidt-Sondermann is married to Susanne Sondermann. They have three children together, now also two grandchildren, and they live in Dresden .
Filmography directing (selection)
- 1997: A Bomb Job - Reportage, MDR
- 1999: Voll Gurke - short film
- 2001: Waldheim. Life in Prison - Report, MDR
- 2002: Zambi. An elephant defends itself - ZDF 37 °
- 2002: Weltenburg Abbey - BR, ORF
- 2003: German class - series about foreigners in Germany, BR (Grimme Prize 2004)
- 2003: Bavaria Training Offensive - Advertising (ITVA Award Gold, Photokina, Cologne 2004)
- 2003: Boards that mean the world - report, MDR
- 2004: We from over there - two-part documentary, ZDF
- 2004: For a handful of lives - ZDF 37 °
- 2004: The journey of the storks - two-part documentary, ZDF (NaturVision, Best German Film and Audience Award 2006 / Eco-Film Tour, Audience Award 2007)
- 2005: Mongolia, the caravan - four-part documentary, ZDF
- 2005: The cross with writing - series about illiterate people in Germany, BR
- 2005: The Romanian monasteries Cocos, Saon and Letea - BR, ORF (Erasmus Euromedia Award Medal 2006 for the Danube Monasteries series)
- 2006: Holy Places - Maria Plain - BR
- 2006: Paganini's secret - SWR, WDR, ORF, SRF
- 2007: Prince and Rebel. William of England - ZDF
- 2007: Holy Places - Neukirchen - BR
- 2008: The Windsors - three-part documentary, ZDF
- 2008: The Brut - short film
- 2008: Puccini. Magician of passion - SWR, WDR, ORF, SRF
- 2009: King's Children. William and Kate - ZDF
- 2009: Robert Schumann's Lost Dreams - SWR, WDR, ORF
- 2010: Myth Conclave - ZDF Church
- 2010: Power of Miracles. The secrets of the Vatican - three-part documentary, ZDF
- 2011: Scavenger hunt among the ancient Greeks - KiKA
- 2011: Prince Harry - ZDF
- 2011: Campo Santo Teutonico - Servus TV
- 2012: Constantine the Great - ZDF Church
- 2013: Hofkirche Dresden - MDR
- 2014: Deadly Frontier - ZDF Contemporary History
- 2015: The Queen - ZDF, ARTE
- 2016: The baptism of fire - ZDF Church
- 2016: The Eternal Pilgrim. Bishop Benno von Meissen - MDR
- 2016: The Odyssey of the Lonely Wolves - ZDF Terra X, ARTE (Lombardy Region Award at the Sondrio Festival 2017)
- 2017: The Thirty Years War - two-part documentary, ZDF Terra X
Filmography producer from 2014 (selection)
- 2014: Scavenger hunt through Poland - KiKA, (Special Prize of the German Bishops' Conference 2015)
- 2016: Marleny - and I still exist! - KiKA (Ulrich Wickert Prize for Children's Rights 2016)
- 2016: Dügün. Wedding in Turkish - cinema documentary WDR
- 2016: We slave owners - NDR
- 2016: the big start. 500 years of the Reformation - three-part documentary, ZDF Terra X (German TV Prize 2018)
- 2017: Scavenger hunt - Around the world with Christ - four-part documentary, KiKA (Golden Compass 2017)
- 2017: The search for paradise - ZDF Church
- 2017: Caught in a rush of happiness - ZDF 37 °
- 2018: Meet ... Schiller, Cleopatra, Leonardo da Vinci - A journey through history, KiKA
- 2018: War Diary - Documentary, WDR, ARTE (nominated for the German Television Award 2019)
- 2018: Slaves - cinema documentary WDR, ARTE
- 2018: Kyrgyzstan - NDR, ARTE
- 2018: Armenia - NDR, ARTE
- 2018: pain, let it go! - ZDF 37 °
- 2018: The Worms wonder building - ZDF Terra X
- 2018: Prince Charles - ZDFzeit
- 2019: Queen Victoria - ARTE, ORF, ZDF
- 2019: Sportskanonen I - Documentary series, MDR
- 2019: Oh, dear Occident - ZDF Church
- 2019: 70 years of the Basic Law - ZDFzeit
- 2019: Our Germany. Unity, Law, Freedom - three-part documentary series, ARD, MDR, WDR
- 2019: Kazakhstan - NDR, ARTE
- 2019: Meet ... Harriet Tubman, Beethoven, Marie Curie, Alexander the Great - KiKA ("Harriet Tubman" nominated for the Prix Jeunesse International 2020)
- 2020: Sportskanonen II - Documentary series, MDR
- 2020: Magellan's journey around the earth - ZDF Terra X
Awards
- Prices
- ITVA Award Gold, Photokina 2004 (Cologne) for the Bavarian training campaign advertising spots (as director and author)
- Adolf Grimme Prize 2004, special honor : Special prize from the German Adult Education Association to BR alpha editor Werner Reuss, u. a. for German class (for the entire project)
- Erasmus Euromedia Award Medal 2006 for the Danube Monasteries series
- NaturVision , Best German Film and Audience Award 2006 for The Journey of the Storks (as director and author)
- Eco-film tour, audience award 2007 for the journey of the storks (as director and author)
- Special prize "Journalistically VALUABLE" in the field of electronic media as part of the Catholic Media Prize 2015 for a paper chase through Poland (as a producer)
- Ulrich Wickert Prize for Children's Rights 2016 for Marleny - and I'm here! (as producer)
- Golden Compass 2017 for Scavenger Hunt - Around the World with Christ (as a producer)
- Lombardy Region Award 2017 of the Sondrio Festival (Italy) for The Odyssey of the Lonely Wolves / Wandering Wolves (as director and author)
- German Television Award 2018, Best Infotainment for Terra X - The Big Beginning. 500 years of the Reformation (as a producer)
- Fair Film Award Non Fiction 2019 for Ifage Filmproduktion (as producer)
- Nominations
- NaturVision Filmfestival Ludwigsburg 2017 nominated Wandering Wolves (as director and author)
- Torelló Mountain Film Festival 2017 (Spain) nominated Wandering Wolves (as director and writer)
- Green screen boarding school Naturfilmfestival Eckernförde 2018 nominated Wandering Wolves (as director and author)
- Ekotopfilm Internat. Festival of Sustainable Development Films 2018 (Slovakia) nominated Wandering Wolves (as director and author)
- Mountain film boarding school Filmfestival Graz 2018 nominated Wandering Wolves (as director and author)
- German Television Award 2019, Best Information nominated War Diary (as producer)
- Prix Jeunesse International 2020 nominated Meet ... Harriet Tubman (as producer)
Web links
- Volker Schmidt-Sondermann at filmportal.de
- Volker Schmidt-Sondermann at Crew United
- Volker Schmidt-Sondermann in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ^ German Short Film Award 1992, nominees. Retrieved April 28, 2020 .
- ↑ a b c Grimme Prize 2004. Accessed April 28, 2020 .
- ↑ a b c German Television Award 2018. Accessed April 28, 2020 .
- ↑ a b NaturVision 2006. Accessed on April 28, 2020 .
- ↑ a b Ökofilmtour 2007. Retrieved on April 28, 2020 .
- ↑ a b Erasmus Euromedia Award 2006. Accessed April 28, 2020 .
- ↑ a b Sondrio Festival 2017. Accessed April 28, 2020 .
- ↑ a b Catholic Media Prize 2015. Accessed April 28, 2020 .
- ↑ a b Ulrich Wickert Prize for Children's Rights 2016. Accessed on April 28, 2020 .
- ↑ a b Golden Compass 2017. Retrieved April 28, 2020 .
- ↑ a b Nominations for the German Television Award 2019. Accessed April 28, 2020 .
- ↑ a b Nominations Prix Jeunesse International 2020. Accessed on April 28, 2020 .
- ↑ Fair Film Award Non Fiction 2019. Retrieved April 28, 2020 .
- ↑ Torelló Mountain Film 2017. Accessed May 7, 2020 .
- ↑ Green Screen International Nature Film Festival 2018. Accessed April 28, 2020 .
- ↑ Ekotopfilm 2018. Accessed May 7, 2020 .
- ↑ Mountainfilm Graz 2018. Retrieved on May 4, 2020 .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Schmidt-Sondermann, Volker |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German film producer, director and screenwriter |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 21, 1965 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Goettingen , Germany |