[she/her] Managing director, story development
Sara Sommerfeldt has been working in the German theater and film industry for over twenty years. First as an actress, then also as a writer, director and producer of multimedia projects. After graduating as an actress from the HMDK Stuttgart, numerous theater engagements followed, including at the Schauspielhaus Bochum and the Staatstheater Stuttgart. She also regularly appeared in front of the camera for film and television productions and successfully initiated and realized her own theater projects. After the birth of her first child, she founded Voicemaniacs GmbH, as whose managing director she produced navi voices for the major navi manufacturers for ten years. In 2019, she released her album HERZ AUS GLAS, for which she created several music videos in addition to the songs. Through her commitment to more diversity and against abuse of power in the theater and film industry, she is in close exchange with numerous organizations and associations. For PQB, she regularly interviews well-known people from the cultural industry about equality, role models and future perspectives. In 2021 she founded RISING GAZE to develop film, series and theater projects with a focus on an intersectional Female Gaze.
[she/her] Expert on sexism & misogyny
As a freelance author, Susanne Kaiser writes books, essays, reports and analyses about society - right now about threatened masculinity and the authoritarian backlash, among others for DIE ZEIT, Der Spiegel or Deutschlandfunk Kultur. Her book POLITISCHE MÄNNLICHKEIT. WIE INCELS, FUNDAMENTALISTEN UND AUTORITÄRE FÜR DAS PATRIARCHAT MOBILMACHEN published by Suhrkamp Verlag. For more than 15 years, she has studied power relations between men and women in Muslim and in Western societies, and more recently, especially emerging phenomena such as organized misogyny and sexism. She is interested in what this has to do with role attributions, how ideals of masculinity and femininity are constructed and enforced, and how women are repeatedly relegated to a subordinate place in the social hierarchy - in which our media culture plays a major role.
As a journalist, she has primarily conducted research on the fringes of society, in marginalized areas and on extremist movements such as jihadists or right-wing terrorists. She has advised members of the Bundestag on these topics.
[he/him] Screenwriter & Director
Sejad Ademaj first studied screenwriting and now directing at the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg. As the son of a Montenegrin Roma family, he lived in Germany from 1991 to 2008 with a tolerated status. This period was marked by constant uncertainty and the threat of being deported. After graduating from high school, Sejad trained as an event manager and then studied "Media Design and Production" at HS Offenburg, which he successfully completed with a bachelor's degree in 2020.
In winter semester of 2020, Sejad began studying screenwriting at the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg. Due to the great success of his second-year film "Fifteen Minutes", which premiered at the Hofer Filmtage in 2022 and was nominated for several short film awards, he was offered a change to the subject of scenic directing. Sejad writes and directs on topics such as (anti-Muslim) racism, ethnic minorities, and socioeconomic background.
He speaks German and English and has a good knowledge of Serbian, Albanian and Romanes.
[they/them] Expert on gender-sensitive language related to neurodivergence
Fluff is a queer, polyamorous and non-binary autist, studies Indology, Tibetology and Mongolian Studies at the University of Leipzig and therefore deals a lot with languages. Besides its studies it is self-employed and gives workshops and lectures all over Germany on the topics of awareness, Ableism and queer life. It also offers sensitivity reading and sensitivity consulting, from non-fiction to novels, and works with small publishers as well as well-known houses like rowohlt.
Fluff also runs a blog and Instagram page under the name Minzgespinst, where, in addition to awareness and education work on gender-sensitive language, it also reports on everyday situations, such as experiences of discrimination as an autistic trans person and life as an independent but care-dependent person. Here, its intersectional experiences also plays a role, as Fluff is both neurodivergent and queer.
[she/her] Director & Producer
Lisa Charlotte Friederich studied acting at the HfMDK Stuttgart and applied theater studies at the JLU Gießen. In her bachelor thesis she dealt with gendering through formal means in streaming series. After guest engagements as an actress in Düsseldorf, Stuttgart and Heidelberg, she was a permanent member of the ensemble at Theater Lübeck from 2010 to 2012. The movie FRITZ LANG, in which she played the leading female role, won the Hessian Film Prize in 2016.
Her work as a director ranges from performative music theater to narrative feature film productions. In 2019 she wrote and staged the multimedia music theater piece CASTOR && POLLUX, which premiered at the Heidelberg Spring International Music Festival. With the musician Rike Huy she wrote, directed and produced the feature film LIVE, which was shown in competition at the Max Ophüls Prize Film Festival and won the Dr. Marschner Foundation won at LICHTER Filmfest Frankfurt International.
Lisa speaks German and Italian at a native level.
[she/her] Expert on blindness & accessibility
Barbara Fickert was born in Mannheim. She first attended a special school for the visually impaired, but graduated from a regular high school. Then she studied law at Heidelberg and Berlin and worked as a logistics specialist.
Twenty years ago she had to do the training with the white long stick - at first reluctantly - which she doesn't want to miss for a minute anymore. In her spare time she plays acoustic guitar and percussion.
In 2016 she founded the KINOBLINDGÄNGER non-profit GmbH, which produces audio descriptions and extended subtitles for international arthouse films for German-speaking countries. Like this, she enables blind and visually impaired people, as well as people with hearing impairments, to follow what is happening on the big screen and to take part in this important part of social life.
[he/him] Exper on gender, diversity & LGBTIQ+
Christoph Gérard Stein is a freelance actor with German-French roots. After stays in France and French-speaking Switzerland, he moved to Frankfurt am Main. He received his acting training at the PLOT SCHAUSPIELSTUDIO.
Christoph also completed his studies in human medicine at GOETHE UNIVERSITÄT FRANKFURT and FACULTÉ DE MÉDECINE in Besançon and was trained as a systemic coach.
He is a member of the BFFS and the Queer Media Society. In 2020 he played in THE END OF SILENCE, a film about the Frankfurt homosexual trials from 1950-51, the then imprisoned Wolfgang Lauinger.
He is currently working with two colleagues on the stage program ECHT, MANN?!, four plays that deal with the question of male identity in different ways.
His native languages are German and French.
[he/him] Screenwriter & Director
Anas Alshouhif is a Syrian filmmaker who has been living in Berlin since 2015. He graduated in directing and screenwriting from FilmArche and has since created a collection of short films that sensitively explore themes of isolation, fear, identity and oppression. His focus is on political and socio-critical issues, looking at them on a microcosmic level. He strives to portray and understand individuals in their contexts.
As a co-founder of La6izi Community, a Syrian artist collective, he actively advocates for the creation of representative spaces for marginalized voices. The community pursues its goal of raising awareness of social ills in a poignant way through public exhibitions, lectures, readings, concerts, film screenings, and performances. Since this year, he has also been a member of the short film jury at the Alfilm Festival, the Arab Film Festival in Berlin.
Anas speaks German, English and Arabic.