HELENE HEGEMANN
DIRECTOR/WRITER
Helene Hegemann moved to Berlin to live with her father when she was 13 and immediately felt at home in the Volksbühne environment, which was charged with anarchy and tradition. With this move, she gave up dancing and began writing. In 2007 she wrote her first play, and at the age of only 14 she created her first mid-length film “Torpedo”, which premiered at the Hofer Filmtage in 2008 and was awarded the Max Ophüls Prize. Just four years later, she published her debut novel “Axolotl Roadkill”, whose later film adaptation, which she directed herself, was screened at the Sundance Film Festival and won the Cinematography Award.
In 2011, she held a fellowship at Villa Aurora, Los Angeles and continued to write critically acclaimed novels, including “Bungalow”, for which she received a nomination for the German Book Prize, “Schlachtensee”, and the biography “Patti Smith”. Her latest novel, “Striker”, was published in 2025.
The mini-series “Strafe”, based on Ferdinand von Schirach's crime novels of the same name, attracted attention in the Canneseries competition in 2022 and was also screened at the Munich Film Festival. Helene Hegemann was co-writer and director of one of the six episodes. In 2024 she participated in the Panorama section at the Berlin International Film Festival with the crime series “Zeit Verbrechen” and her episode “Deine Brüder”, produced by X Filme.
Hegeman also directs for theater and opera, regularly writes columns and essays for magazines and newspapers (including Süddeutsche Zeitung, Die Zeit, Spiegel, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung), and she is the host of the ARD Mediathek’s documentary literature format “Longreads”.
Helene Hegemann is represented by Katrin Näher.
ZEIT VERBRECHEN: DEINE BRÜDER
COMING UP
STRIKER
After "Bungalow", a new novel by Helene Hegemann was published by Kiepenheuer & Witsch in March, in which the boundaries between conspiracy myths, class struggle and brute force become blurred.
LONGREADS
The documentary literature format LONGREADS with Helene Hegemann as host is entering its second round.
In the first season in 2024, she spoke with journalist and author Thilo Mischke, journalist and author Samira El Ouassil and boxer and author Zeina Nassar about literature and books that are important to them.
The format is produced for the ARD Mediathek.
A broadcast date for the 2nd season is not yet known.