Marcel Mettelsiefen


Marcel Mettelsiefen is a director, cameraman, photographer and producer. His films on Syrian Civil War such as Syria: Children on the Frontline, Children on the Frontline: The Escape and have earned him critical appraisal and recognition. Mettelsiefen has won two BAFTA and two Emmy awards and was nominated for an Academy Award in the category Best Documentary Short Subject for at 89th Academy Awards with producer Stephen Ellis.
Mettelsiefen has a background in photo-journalism, and has reported from across the Middle East and Afghanistan. He is the co-founder of the magazine, Zenith, one of the leading publications about the MIddle East and the Arab world in Germany, and a founding member of the German Middle East Think tank Candid Foundation.
Mettelsiefen studied political science and medicine at the Humboldt University in Berlin, and photographed within Syria more than twenty-five times. It was in Syria that he moved from photojournalism and then into documentary film-making.

Career

Mettelsiefen has worked for international news agencies in the Middle East, Afghanistan, Iraq and Haiti. In 2004 he started medicine school in Berlin. In 2009 he suspended his studies to go to Afghanistan to work on several photo reportage projects. His photos from that time appear in a book about the controversial airstrike on Kunduz which killed over 100 civilians. Mettelsiefen has been covering the Arab Spring and Syria specifically since April 2011. Since then he has returned to the war-torn country more than twenty times. His reports from Syria have aired on Channel4, PBS Frontline, CNN, Al Jazeera, Canal+ etc.

Filmography