Maren Ade | Screenwriters' Lecture

Maren Ade, writer-director of Toni Erdmann, shares insights from her career, discussing character development, writing emotion and directing her own work.

Maren Ade’s first full feature was Der Wald vor lauter Bäumen (The Forest for the Trees, 2003) about a lonely teacher who moves to an urban school with unrealistic ambitions of changing the lives of her new pupils. Ade followed this up with Alle Anderen (Everyone Else, 2009), a sun-kissed portrait of love, sex and romance following a young German couple who find their seemingly unbreakable relationship severely tested while holidaying in the Mediterranean. Her third film is Toni Erdmann (2016) a fascinating depiction of an estranged father and his emotionally repressed adult daughter as he tries to re-forge their relationship in a unique and comic way.

An honest examination of the relationships between ordinary people seems to be at the heart of her work, all dealt with compassionately and through an unfettered window of truth, inviting the audience to form their own opinions and judgements.