Tobias Wiemann

Tobias Wiemann was born in Greifswald in 1981 and lives in Berlin. After training as a media designer for image and sound, he worked as a cameraman, cutter and director and has produced numerous award-winning short films. From 2008 he worked for Til Schweiger's Barefoot Films. During this time he wrote his first feature film, the comedy GROSSSTADTKLEIN distributed in 2013 by Warner Bros. His fairy tale VON EINEM, DER AUSZOG, DAS FÜRCHTEN ZU LERNEN (for the TV channel ARD) was the most successful TV fairy tale production of 2015. Tobias' second feature film MOUNTAIN MIRACLE celebrated its premiere at the Berlinale in 2017 in the "Generation Kplus” section, was selected in Giffoni and has since then won many awards at national and international film festivals. He is currently writing together with Jytte-Merle Böhrnsen PITS PERFEKTER PLAN. The development of the script was funded by the initiative "The Special Children's Film".

Director’s statement

“When I went to school, the subject of the Nazi era was abstract. Photos, facts, many questions and distant answers. There was a silence at home on the subject that was rarely broken. Nevertheless, the students exchanged ideas. Why was that? Why wasn't action taken? Now I'm a father and I see in my son that the subject of war is something he cannot grasp. "Why war?" I find it difficult to explain to him why there are wars in the world and when he says with vehement conviction: "Dad, there will be no more wars." I smile and think to myself that would be nice.
The story of Rolf and Nuria does not aim to answer the "why questions". It's much more important to let the viewers share in the unshakable power of our protagonists. The power that only children have. The instinct for justice and the belief in miracles. They should experience how Nuria and Rolf try to make the impossible possible. How they learn from each other through their friendship, how they grow beyond themselves and how they recapture what was taken from them in times of war. Freedom. [...] Diversity is very important to me. A frequently overlooked point in films. With our international cast, I see great potential here. It's a film set in 1940, and even then there was variety.
The partisan Esther, for example, is a strong woman [...] Casting Esther as the Catalan leader of the Resistance group with international roots is important to me for historical reasons. Women also played an important role in the resistance movements against the National Socialists. The character Esther is also a symbol for women like Marie-Madeleine Fourcade, Josephine Baker or Fasia Jansen.”