kimmel & metz filmproduktion
When Imogen Kimmel and Doris Metz met at a TOP Talente event in autumn 2015, they had no idea that six months later they would tackle a film project about transidentity together and one year later, in 2017, found the kimmel & metz film production company. Before that they had met the surgeon Dr Jürgen Schaff by chance, who jokingly introduced his profession saying: “I operate men into women and women into men.”
These two encounters grew into an intensive five-year collaboration that resulted in the film TRANS – I GOT LIFE, a co-production with Florianfilm, Cologne, funded by several German film subsidies, ZDF and Arte and realised between Munich, Moscow and San Francisco.
The kimmel & metz film production, with which Doris Metz received further script funding for her project “Petra Kelly” in 2020, focuses on projects by the two filmmakers.
Imogen Kimmel
graduated from the FU Berlin with a Master’s degree in German and Art History. She is a graduate of the Hochschule für Fernsehen und Film, Munich and has a Postgraduate Master at NSFTV, Leeds, UK. She attended numerous acting workshops with John Costopolous, Gilles Foreman, was a member of the Mark Travis 13 Group for three years and performed in the early days of Transformtheater Berlin under Henryk Baranowski.
Since her success with ”Secret Society“, an international cinema co-production shot in England, a social comedy that won the audience award at the renowned film festival “Films de Femmes” in Créteil, she has directed many TV films and series. Her films are screened at film festivals worldwide. Her social spot “Move Your Ass” won at the New York Film Festival.
In 2011 she lived in Cambodia as artist in residence realising a social art project for Youth for Peace. She was a board member of the german directors' guild. As one of the initiators of “Pro Quote Regie” she is committed to equal opportunities for women directors. She teaches as a professor of directing at Macromedia Munich.
Doris Metz
Doris Metz was born in Oberstdorf/Allgäu. She is a documentary film author, director and producer for cinema and television.
After earning a master’s degree in German studies and politics in Munich, she worked for ten years as an editor and writer for the largest german national daily newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung in the media and domestic politics sections.
With SCHATTENVÄTER (Ghost Fathers), she made a highly acclaimed cinema documentary in 2005 about Matthias Brandt and Pierre Boom, the sons of german chancellor Willy Brandt and GDR spy Günter Guillaume. Her films LESBOS and KLEINE EROBERER (Little Conquerors) were nominated for the national Grimme Award. In 2017, she founded kimmel & metz filmproduktion together with Imogen Kimmel. TRANS – I GOT LIFE is Doris Metz’s third feature film together with cinematographer, Sophie Maintigneux.
