Special Guests

Noah Saavedra

Born in 1991 in Oberpullendorf and raised in Vienna, Noah Saavedra first studied acting at the local conservatory in 2013 before moving to the Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts in Berlin in 2015. In 2017 he was awarded the most important Austrian film and television prize, the Romy as “Best Young Male” and the New Faces Award for his title role in the cinema film “Egon Schiele – Death and the Maiden”. In 2018 he received the O.E. Hasse Prize. He will have his first engagement in the 2019/2020 season and was a permanent member of the ensemble at the Residenztheater from 2019 to 2022. In 2020, he was in Julia von Heinz’s “And Tomorrow the World,” which premiered at the Venice Film Festival and was Germany’s Oscar Entry. His first English-language lead role is in Marten Persiel’s “Everything Will Change,” which was awarded the Max Ophüls Prize in the Audience Award Feature Film category in 2021. In 2021, he was also in “The Forest Stands Silent” by Saralisa Volm, which was shown at the Berlinale.

Petra Volpe

Swiss/Italian screenwriter and director Petra Volpe studied film at the Film Academy Konrad Wolf in Potsdam Babelsberg, Germany. Her feature “The Divine Order” was selected as the Swiss entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 90th Academy Awards. The film had its international premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival and won three award, including the Nora Ephron Prize and the Audience Award. “The Divine Order” was a box office hit in Switzerland and was nominated for seven Swiss Film Awards and won three. Volpe’s debut film “Dreamland” was nominated for four Swiss Film Awards. Volpe also wrote the screenplay for “Heidi” (2015) the internationally most successful Swiss film of all time. “Labyrinth of Peace,” the mini-series she created and wrote, earned rave reviews and sold internationally. Petra Volpe lives in New York and has an office in Berlin.

Noah Tinwa

Noah Tinwa was born in 2001 in Berlin. In 2017, he played his first roles outside of school in „Klassenbuch” at Junges Deutsches Theater and in “Go Baby, Go” at the Volksbühne Berlin youth theater. His first film role was in the 2020 short ‚Bird of Paradise` – and was included by German Films in cooperation with the FFA in the Next Generation Short Tiger programme, which presents the best German up-and-coming short films at international festivals. He wrote, produced and directed the short film „Reduced Visibility“ in 2020, which is available on Amazon Prime. In 2021, he played the role of Ariel in season three of Christian Klandt’s TV series “We Are Now“.

In summer 2021 he joined the Amazon Prime Video original series ‘Luden: Könige Der Reeperbahn’ (US release title: ‘The Pimp: No F***ing Fairytale’), which is released worldwide. For his first feature film role in Sophie Linnenbaum’s ‘The Ordinaries’, he was nominated for Best Young Actor in the 2022 Filmfest Munich New German Cinema section. ‘The Ordinaries,’ winner of 8 international awards, will make its US Premiere at SXSW, followed by the West Coast Premiere at San Francisco’s Berlin & Beyond Film Festival, where it will be honored with the Youth 4 German Cinema Award.