Maren Hahnfeld
Maren is a German-born documentary filmmaker who has been living and working in London for over 20 years. Maren produced and directed her first films at the BBC before deciding to develop her projects independently. Her films have been screened and exhibited internationally in galleries, on television and at film festivals, most recently at the Frankfurt B3 Biennale, Ann Arbor Film Festival in Michigan and the Toronto Women’s Film Festival. Maren’s work explores the encounter between newcomer and local through personal narratives that reflect social or political change. By revealing the stories that happen when two worlds collide, Maren’s films ultimately question the meaning of home and exile. She has a particular interest in women's film, in representing the female experience on-screen through immersive projects. Maren works as a senior lecturer at Kingston University and is currently completing a practice-based PhD in Visual Arts at CREAM, University of Westminster.
In 2016, Maren filmed and directed North of Eden, a short film that retraces the experiences of a German teenager on a remote potato farm in the Idaho desert twenty-seven years ago. North of Eden combines photography, poetry and conversations to investigate the experience of otherness in a rural community in the American Northwest and was screened at the Ann Arbor Film Festival in Michigan.
In 2017, Maren continued her work in the same community in Idaho and filmed and directed Winter in Eden, a direct response to the first election of Donald Trump. Winter in Eden was screened at the Ann Arbor Film Festival as well as in Caldas da Reinha Art Gallery in Portugal where it was shown alongside an exhibition of Maren’s photography.
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In 2018, Maren explored the lives of Syrian refugee women in remote German communities. In the town of Altena, Maren met Syrian artist Rose Alkhaled with whom she later produced A Grave on the Border. This immersive short is an intimate account of war and flight told through emotive sculptures made from newspaper and the performance of poetry. A Grave on the Border has screened at several international film festivals and received an honourable mention for Human Rights from the Toronto Women’s Film Festival TIWFF.
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n 2024, Maren also completed Jenseits von Heimat/Beyond Home, a feature documentary about the encounters between Syrian refugee women and locals in two remote German communities, the medieval town of Altena and on the small North Sea Island of Föhr. The women express vividly what it means to be separated from their homeland and allude to their daily struggle of living without the people left behind. Beyond Home provokes debate, depicts nuanced characters and gives a voice to those too often unheard.