Maren-Kea Freese

Director

Maren-Kea Freese, born on April 24, 1960, in Hanover, is a German director and screenwriter with an international profile. She studied film studies, journalism, and German language and literature at the Free University of Berlin and completed her directing studies at the German Film and Television Academy Berlin (dffb). Freese began her career in the mid-1980s with short films, and by 1999 she had made her successful cinema debut with the feature film Zoe. In the multi-award-winning drama ZOE (1999), she portrays a young woman trying to find herself in Berlin while her past catches up with her. The film won the Director's Award at the 1999 Munich Film Festival and was screened at numerous festivals, including Berlin, Moscow, Gothenburg, and Lodz. Her second feature film, WAS ICH VON IHR WEISS (2005), was based on a screenplay by Maren-Kea Freese in collaboration with Thomas Jonigk and Sabine Pochhammer. The plot focuses on the relationship between a teenager and her mother, who is a pickpocket. The drama was shown at the Gothenburg Film Festival and received several nominations, including for the German Film Award at the Munich Film Festival. Freese had previously made the short film Zoe (1992), which was part of the dffb's short film program and was developed into the feature-length version ZOE (1999). With her minimalist style and focus on characters in urban environments, she quickly established herself as a defining voice of young German cinema. The film “Wilma will mehr” (2025) marks Maren-Kea Freese's third feature film and premiered on May 8 at the Filmkunstfest Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. The tragicomedy tells the story of Wilma (Fritzi Haberlandt), a woman in her mid-forties who was once a successful machinist and electrician in the Lusatian brown coal mining area, but flees to Vienna after losing her job and experiencing personal upheaval.