Anne-Marie
Hess

Anne-Marie Hess was born in Houston, Texas in 1977. She completed studies in Film at New York University and received the Martin Scorsese Film Production Award in 1999.

She was presented with the Student Award at Hampton’s International Film Festival for her short film “The Speed of Light” (2000). Her second short film “Beautiful Day” (2001) was shown at the Blumbershot Film Festival in Seattle and the International Film Festival of Rio de Janeiro. In 2001, she developed and produced the television show “Real Fiction” for the company C-Films in Zurich. Anne-Marie Hess also wrote the screenplay for the film “Climbing Miss Sophie” (2002) by Liat Dahan.

During her stay in Berlin on a fellowship from the Artists-in-Berlin Programme in 2003, Anne-Marie Hess worked mainly on the script for her first feature film. This film project is based on her own short film “The Speed of Light”, in which ten-year-old Caleb dreams himself away from reality and his straight-laced mother to a fantasy world. In addition, during her visit to Berlin Hess designed short documentary, portraying workers and ‘simple people’ in Berlin before the background of the far-reaching political and social changes of the past decade. The starting point for these works, according to the filmmaker herself, was an interest in the poetry of interplay between everyday activities and urban living space, social change and individual lifestyle.