Lena Vurma

Award-winning Swiss/Czech producer Lena Vurma lives and works in Berlin and on the Isle of Skye. She is a graduate of the German Film and Television Academy (dffb) and won the Robert Bosch Foundation's film award for her animation film THE LITTLE RED PAPER SHIP. The film is still broadcast on KIKA to this day. Her first feature film LOST PLACE by Thor Klein earned her a nomination for the First Steps No Fear Award 2014 and was screened in theaters in Germany, Russia and Japan. In October 2015 she completed the European producer workshop EAVE and was selected for the Producers Network in Cannes 2016. She celebrated the world premiere at the Busan Film Festival 2017 with IN THE SHADOWS, the debut film by Indian director Dipesh Jain (USC graduate in LA). IN THE SHADOWS is a British-Indian-German co-production and was released in cinemas in India in 2018. With Thor Klein's second film, ADVENTURES OF A MATHEMATICIAN - a German-Polish-British co-production, Lena Vurma has won the VGF Young Producer Award 2020. The film will be released in cinemas in 20+ territories, among them France (Rezo) and USA (Samuel Goldwyn) this year. Currently she is co-writing/directing „Leonora in the Morning Light“ and the tv series „Incomers“ with Thor Klein. The projects benefit from Lena's experience and knowledge of the international market, through her position as Head of Acquisitions at Filmwelt (“Maudie”, “The Salt of the Earth”, “Sorry we missed you”). Lena Vurma has been a Tribeca Film Institute and Film Independent Fellow and Alfred P. Sloan Prize winner. In January 2020 she completed the British film business leader program Inside Pictures and has been a mentor for Screen Skills UK since then. In 2019 she was a member of the jury of the Zurich Film Festival for the “Film Science Award” and since 2020 she is the Program Delegate Germany for the Zurich Film Festival. In 2021 she was on the Sundance Jury for the Sloan Film Prize. Lena Vurma also teaches regularly at the MET Filmschool Berlin.