Helke Misselwitz was born in Planitz in 1947. From 1978 to 1982, she studied directing at the Academy for Film and Television in Potsdam-Babelsberg. Her request to enter the DEFA Studio for Feature Films was refused, so she took other jobs while making short essayistic pieces for the DEFA Studio for Documentary Films. When director Heiner Carow accepted her as a master student at the East German Academy of the Arts in 1985, she created a key documentary about women in the final years of the GDR, Winter Adé (1988); this was the title film of a retrospective at the 2009 Berlin Film Festival. Misselwitz directed films at the DEFA Studio for Documentary Films from 1988 to 1991. In 1992, she directed her first feature film, Herzsprung, followed by Engelchen (1996). Since 1997, she has been a professor of directing at the Academy of Film and Television in Potsdam-Babelsberg.

Selected Filmography

2004 Quartier der Illusionen (transl. A Place for Illusions, TV, doc.)

2001 Fremde Oder (transl. Foreign Oder, TV, doc.)

1996 Meine Liebe, deine Liebe (My Love, Your Love, doc.)

1996 Engelchen (Little Angel)

1992 Herzsprung

1990 Sperrmüll (Bulk Refuse, doc.)

1989 Wer fürchtet sich vorm schwarzen Mann (Who’s Afraid of the Bogeyman, doc.)

1988 Winter Adé (Winter Adé, doc.)

1985 Tango-Traum (Tango Dream, doc.)

1983 Aktfotografie - z.B. Gundula Schulze (transl. Nude Photography–e.g., Gundula Schulze, doc.)