Hanna Maria Heidrich

WWF: We Miss You
1st prize European Film School
1st prize European Branded Shorts
Special Jury award
Unsigned: hannamariaheidrich.com

Crowned queen of the YDA 2011, Hanna Maria Heidrich’s emotive film We Miss You for WWF picked up not only one, not even two, but three prizes at this year’s ceremony. Honoured with first prize in the European Film School category, first prize in European Branded Shorts, as well as the prestigious Special Jury award, the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg student unanimously impressed the judges.

The 27-year-old from Freiburg in southern Germany was a relative late bloomer when it came to directing, only finding her place behind the camera at the age of 19. After forming a VJ group with friends, Heidrich went on to intern at production companies and agencies before a stint as an assistant director led her to the Filmakademie. Her winning film, which follows a New York City cop as he unexpectedly reconnects with nature, was born out of a desire to create an environmental film with a new sensibility.

“Current environmental campaigns tend to give us a clear message to act and this is good and important,” explains the director. “However, I believe that you can only take an active part in environmentalism if you care for nature. And so instead of raising funds or creating a guilty conscience, the only thing this campaign wants is to make the audience view nature as a friend.”

Shot over two days in Frankfurt on a €20,000 budget, Heidrich is currently finishing up her final year at film school with an even more ambitious project – a TV pilot in collaboration with a German TV station. But despite this long-format challenge, she’s not turning her back on commercials: “I really like directing commercials because of the short working periods,” Heidrich affirms. “You can get a very creative output in a very short time and I love the challenge to tell a story and seduce the audience in less than a minute. That’s why every single frame has to be perfect!”