Anna Winger


Anna Winger is an American writer, producer, screenwriter, and photographer who lives in Berlin, Germany. She is creator of the television dramas Deutschland 83, Deutschland 86, and Unorthodox.

Early life and education

Winger grew up in Massachusetts. Her parents are anthropologists, and their work led their family to live in Kenya and Mexico as well. She is Jewish.
She graduated from Columbia University in 1993.

Career

Before she started writing, Winger worked as a professional photographer for more than a decade.
Winger's first novel, This Must Be the Place, was published in 2008 by Riverhead Books.
Her personal essays have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Condé Nast Traveler, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and Süddeutsche Zeitung. Winger's radio series for NPR Worldwide, Berlin Stories, ran from 2009 to 2013.
Her first project as a screenwriter was Deutschland 83, a television drama which she co-created with her husband Joerg Winger. The series aired on Sundance TV in June 2015 and on RTL in November and December 2015. The 8-episode series, about a young East German spy on an undercover mission to West Germany in 1983, had its world premiere when the first two episodes were shown at the 2015 Berlin Film Festival. Winger wrote the series in English, but it was shot in German. It is the first German-language series to be shown on American television.
In 2016, she founded her own Berlin-based production company, Studio Airlift.
She also co-created and co-produced 2018 Amazon Prime and Sundance TV miniseries Deutschland 86, which is the follow-up season to Deutschland 83. The third installment, Deutschland 89, has been filmed and is in post-production.
Winger and Alexa Karolinski served as co-creators and co-writers of miniseries Unorthodox, which debuted on March 26, 2020 and is Netflix's first ever Yiddish show.

Personal life

Winger met her husband in Chile. Before 2002, Winger lived in New York and her husband Joerg Winger lived in Cologne, Germany. In 2002, they moved to Berlin, Germany. They have two daughters.
She speaks English, Spanish and German, but always writes in English.

Filmography