Joya Thome
Born in 1990 in Berlin, she first got into film as a child actor in her father's films. She was a Giffoni juror in 2003. After graduating from high school in 2009, she began to make her own short films, which were shown at numerous film festivals around the world. In addition to her work as a filmmaker, she studies educational science at the Humboldt University of Berlin. During her semester abroad in New York, she took part in the Screening Class of the TISCH School of the Arts. QUEEN OF NIENDORF is her feature film debut.

Director's statement
"I met Lisa Moell in 2015 when I was working as a casting director for another film. Lisa, who has never been in front of a camera before, walked into the room and impressed me not only with her incredibly authentic performance but also with a special charisma, that you don’t see very often. Half a year later, Philipp Wunderlich and me sat down and wrote the screenplay of QUEEN OF NIENDORF for her. Since I wanted to catch that preadolescent phase in which she was in, I knew we had to start shooting without any film funding. The whole crew and some of the cast members were living at my dad’s farmhouse in the small village of Niendorf in Brandenburg, where we shot the whole movie. With a tiny budget of 20.000 Euro and with the overwhelming support of the Niendorfers, we were able to bring the story to life. All of the boys were first time actors from villages nearby. I really loved it when they seemed to forget the camera and just started playing as if no-one was watching. To me, QUEEN OF NIENDORF is not only the story of a brave girl trying to find her place in life but also an attempt to expresses a vague longing for simplicity and carefreeness that I feel like is characteristic for our generation.  With this film, we tried to create images, that we wanted to see and also missed somehow".