Martina Priessner, born in 1969, lives and works as a filmmaker and author in Berlin. She has long been concerned with Turkey and aesthetic and political questions of German-Turkish relations. Her documentary film debut Wir sitzen im Süden (We’re Sitting in the South) (ZDF/Das Kleine Fernsehspiel) premiered in 2010 at DOK Leipzig competition and was nominated for the Grimme Prize in 2011. In 2013 she made the found footage film Everyday I’m Capuling about the Gezi Park protests in Istanbul, where she lived from 2012 to 2017. From 2015 to 2016 she was a fellow at IPC Mercator and during this time made the film 650 Words, which treats migration and language. The Guardian, her latest documentary, tells the story of a Syrian Orthodox nun in Tur Abdin. It premiered in the competition at DOK Leipzig in 2020 and was awarded the Goethe-Institut’s Documentary Film Prize. She has received numerous grants, including from the Nipkow Program, DEFA and Mercator Foundation.
 
Martina Priessner was a resident at Tarabya Culture Academy from September 2012 to March 2013 and April 2018.