Laura Laabs

Laura Laabs (1985) studied politics, cultural sciences and journalism in Berlin (Humboldt University), Potsdam and Paris (Sciences Po) and also film directing at Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF. There, she finally completed a post-graduate programme with Andreas Kleinert in 2017. Her first documentary film Spinach and Sugar (2012) portrayed her Jewish grandmother, who was a painter, writer and founder of a legendary East German fashion magazine. The film made its way to plenty of festivals and won the Most Innovative Short Film award at Visions du Réel in Nyon, Switzerland. Laabs’ second film Volksbühne (2013) won the Emerging Talent Award at the Biennale of the Moving Image in Frankfurt. She was selected for the mentoring programme ‘Into the Wild’ and awarded the Künstlerinnen-Stipendium by the city of Berlin, besides other funding from various institutions. Her latest feature film Rote Sterne Überm Feld (2024) looks for traces of the past in the present of a young generation and unites four different historical times and four different film-formats. Dealing with the German past, and searching for a modern identity and progressive film language are key aspects of her work.

Filmography

Spinach and Sugar (2012, short doc), Volksbühne (2013, short), Melusine (2014, short), Country Girls (2017, TV series), Rote Sterne Überm Feld/Red Stars Upon the Fields (2024)