"Powerfully Documented, Carefully Written, Forcefully Directed and Skillfully Acted. 'Labyrinth of Lies' is a Devastating Chapter in the History of Justice, More Relevant Today Than Ever."
Rex Reed, THE NEW YORK OBSERVER
NOW PLAYING ~ COMING SOON TO A CITY NEAR YOU

Synopsis

Germany 1958. Reconstruction, economic miracle. Johann Radmann (Alexander Fehling) has just recently been appointed Public Prosecutor and, like all beginners, he has to content himself with boring traffic offenses. When the journalist Thomas Gnielka (André Szymanski) causes a ruckus in the courthouse, Radmann pricks up his ears: a friend of Gnielka's identified a teacher as a former Auschwitz guard, but no one is interested in prosecuting him. Against the will of his immediate superior, Radmann begins to examine the case - and lands in a web of repression and denial, but also of idealization. In those years, "Auschwitz" was a word that some people had never heard of, and others wanted to forget as quickly as possible. Only the Prosecutor General Fritz Bauer (Gert Voss) encourages Radmann's curiosity; he himself has long wanted to bring the crimes committed in Auschwitz to the public's attention, but lacks the legal means for a prosecution. When Johann Radmann and Thomas Gnielka find documents that lead to the perpetrators, Bauer immediately recognizes how explosive they are and officially entrusts all further investigations to Radmann. The young prosecutor devotes himself with utmost commitment to his new task and is resolved to find out what really happened back then. He questions witnesses, combs through files, secures evidence and allows himself to be drawn into the case to such an extent that he is blind to everything else - even to Marlene Wondrak (Friederike Becht), with whom he has fallen hopelessly in love. Radmann oversteps boundaries, falls out with friends, colleagues and allies, and is sucked deeper and deeper into a labyrinth of lies and guilt in his search for the truth. But what he ultimately brings to light will change the country forever.

Cast

 
 

Filmmakers

 

Giulio Ricciarelli

"A story of personal courage, of fighting for what is right, and a story of redemption.

Germany in 1958. An atmosphere of frantic optimism and denial, a country rebuilding itself. Yet the shadow of its war crimes is catching up, literally around the corner.

I feel the theme dictates the aesthetic choices. The camera work is classic: composed shots calibrate what we see and what is left to the imagination. Space and time are designed for strong acting; emotions that carry the story forward. Smooth editing, rhythmic and precise. I want the audience to be immersed only in the story, the complex narration made easier by an intense, minimalist score. No part should draw attention to itself and detract from the story.

Trust in the story; a story for our times.

We live in an age of self-publishing, in which 13-year-olds are their own PR department, while as individuals we feel we cannot have any influence on such a globalized, networked, and complex world. In this age, this story reminds us that it is always individuals who bring about change and push forward civilization.

This struggle, the pain and the beauty of this struggle - this is the core of this movie."

-Giulio Ricciarelli

How did you react when you were confronted with the theme for the first time?

I thought the story was incredible. I was particularly unable to believe that many Germans in the late 1950s had never heard about Auschwitz. It was only in the course of my research that I concluded that this was indeed so. As a young person, I had always been under the impression that the Nazi period had been amply studied and treated in Germany after 1945 through history lessons, a variety of films and visits to concentration camp memorials.

But the truth is: after the end of WWII, just about nothing was treated comprehensively for several years; instead, there was an attempt to silence the dark past. This was a chapter one simply did not talk about. Nor about the perpetrators, nor about the victims. Of course there were people who knew about Auschwitz, but the majority of the Germans did not. This topic would have continued to be suppressed if four courageous people - a Prosecutor General and three young public prosecutors - had not overcome all obstacles to push through their vision of the Frankfurt Trial. Four heroes who changed Germany forever.

How would you characterize your main character, the young public prosecutor Johann Radmann?

Johann is a self-assured, very Germanic, rather formalist jurist with a humanistic education and clear moral values. His Achilles' heel is his rigid black and white way of viewing things. At the beginning he thinks he knows what's right and what's wrong. Only in the course of the events does he realize that It is not up to him to judge other people. He can only conduct this trial with humility.

In your film, you also provide a forum for the opposite side.

Yes, this meant a lot to us. Of course we feel that we should absolutely confront our past. But the opposite position can also claim some good arguments for itself. The German Federal Chancellor Konrad Adenauer had set up the doctrine that one had to draw the line and spread the cloak of silence over the past. This was the official stance which Fritz Bauer and his comrades-in-arms had to knock down. And the question posed by Senior Public Prosecutor Friedberg to Johann Radmann reduces it to one point: "Do you want every young person to wonder whether his father was a murderer or not?"

To what extent were you able to borrow original quotes when writing the dialogues?

Many statements by Fritz Bauer have been preserved, mainly through the work of the Fritz Bauer Institute. Of course we were also able to base ourselves on witnesses' statements from the trial. And Attorney Lichter's perfidious argumentation that the "selection" was an act of humanity intended to save human lives, really does stem from a lawyer's defense strategy in the Frankfurt Trials. As to the historical facts, we are as correct and precise as possible. Only in conjunction with the inner life of the characters did we allow ourselves narrative liberties. We don't want to give viewers a history lesson, but an emotional cinematic experience. That is why we've tried again and again to loosen up the action though humor - not through artificial slapstick elements, but through a gentle humor that arises from the characters. I feel it is wrong to say: "Oh my god, it's a serious theme, you're not supposed to laugh!"

The actor, director and producer GIULIO RICCIARELLI was born in Milan in 1965 and began his career after his training as a stage actor at the Otto Falckenberg Schule. He took on an engagement at the Theater Basel in 1989/90 and worked at the Staatstheater Stuttgart, the Kammerspiele in Munich, the Schauspiel Bonn (1992/94) and at the Bayerisches Staatsschauspiel. He also starred in many TV roles, and in feature films such as ROSSINI (1996). In 2000 he founded - together with Sabine Lamby - the naked eye filmproduction, which has made a name for itself with feature films by talented young directors, such as MADRID (2002) and THE FRIEND (2003). Next to his activity as producer, Ricciarelli also works as a director. His short film VINCENT was awarded the Golden Sparrow in 2005 and was nominated for the European Film Award. This was followed by further short films: in 2008 LOVE IT LIKE IT IS, and in 2009 LIGHTS, which was shown in the short-film competition of the film festival Max Ophüls Preis, and was also nominated for the European Film Award.

LABYRINTH OF LIES is Giulio Ricciarellí's cinematic feature film debut as director and scriptwriter.

 

ABOUT THE FRANKFURT AUSCHWITZ TRIAL | Gallery

In mid-1959, Prosecutor General of the State of Hessen Fritz Bauer (Gert Voss) conferred the Auschwitz investigation to the two young prosecutors Joachim Kügler (1926–2012) and Georg Friedrich Vogel (1926–2007) – the actual models on whom the prosecutor Johann Radmann in LABYRINTH OF LIES is based. Prosecutor Gerhard Wiese joined Joachim Kügler and Georg Friedrich Vogel, who had been leading the investigation since the middle of 1959.


The Auschwitz Trials in the Regional Court in Frankfurt am Main and their background.

Written by Werner Renz of the Fritz Bauer Institute, whose main areas of research are "History of the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial" and "History of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration and Extermination Camp"; Renz is the author of numerous publications on these subjects.

In the late 1950s, when after long delay the German judiciary began investigating SS personnel at Auschwitz, the crimes against humanity perpetrated there were still unknown territory among Germans.

Although the first commander of Auschwitz, Rudolf Höß (1900-1947), had been questioned about the extermination activities in the death camp at the trial of the so-called main war criminals before the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, the testimony by the perpetrators and the few survivors had not penetrated public consciousness.

Auschwitz was a blank spot in the memory of Germans until the Frankfurt trial created awareness and knowledge of the mass killings and other atrocities in Auschwitz.

At the end of the 1950s, the political and legal elite in Germany believed that, with the end of the trials undertaken by the Allies, as well as the few cases in German courts in the years immediately after the war, the legal inquiry into the Nazi past had been completed.

But the "Einsatzkommando" trial, which ran from April through August 1958 in Ulm, concerning ten members of the SS police and security forces in Tilsit who took part in the mass shooting of Jews, showed clearly that many Nazi crimes had yet to be investigated and that in West German society, which was enjoying the booming economic miracle, there were still many "murderers among us."

An important step in remedying the scandalous failure of politicians and courts to prosecute Nazi crimes was the foundation in 1958 of the Central Office for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes in Ludwigsburg in the State of Baden-Württemberg. Here, prosecutors and judges could systematically investigate Nazi criminals and collect evidence.

Shortly after the Ludwigsburg office opened, it began focusing its investigations on Auschwitz. By early March 1958, proceedings had been instituted against the Auschwitz perpetrator Wilhelm Boger. The Central Office also investigated other members of the Gestapo at the camp, as well as members of the SS who shot prisoners allegedly "attempting to escape." In addition, criminal investigations were launched against SS doctors at Auschwitz. The preliminary work in Ludwigsburg resulted in several collective trials of Auschwitz perpetrators.

It was originally agreed that Ludwigsburg, after identifying suspects and accumulating sufficient proof, would hand over its investigations to competent prosecutors elsewhere. However, there was a risk in transferring the investigations to prosecution authorities who were often ill-prepared and occasionally unwilling to investigate. Many law enforcement agencies lacked competent prosecutors. In addition, proceedings against Nazi criminals were unpopular, and could be expected to be drawn out and costly. There was thus reluctance on the part of some state prosecutors to take over the proceedings from Ludwigsburg and to lay charges.

Momentum began to pick up with regard to the Auschwitz case upon the insistence of the Prosecutor General of the State of Hessen, Fritz Bauer (1903-1968). Bauer, appointed Hessen's senior prosecutor in 1956, made it his mission, alongside reforming the penal and penitentiary code, to bring the Nazi past to light. He was convinced that trials of Nazi criminals would be politically instructive, and that the legal proceedings would give Germans a political and historical education and lead to moral reflection. A humanist, a patriot, and a believer in humankind's ability to learn from the past, Bauer hoped that Germans, when confronted with the terrible, inconceivable crimes through the trials of Nazi perpetrators, would "pass judgement on themselves." For him, the underlying purpose of the trials was to convey awareness that the highest commandment for the protection of human rights is to refuse to carry out the criminal orders of a regime.

Early in 1959, Bauer was given documents relating to Auschwitz by the journalist Thomas Gnielka (1928-1965), who had obtained them from a Holocaust survivor living in Frankfurt am Main. The documents gave Bauer the evidence he needed to justify an investigation of Auschwitz. Bauer then took a highly unusual step: Rather than simply making the proof available to the newly opened Central Office, and allowing it to investigate further, he obtained a ruling from the Federal Court in Karlsruhe declaring the State Court in Frankfurt competent to investigate and judge criminal cases against Auschwitz perpetrators.

Karlsruhe's finding on the competency of the State Court in Frankfurt further entailed that the Public Prosecutor's Office, which was subordinate to that of the Prosecutor General and under his oversight and authority, was responsible for carrying out the investigation. Bauer sought to achieve multiple goals through this approach. By having the Stuttgart investigation transferred to Frankfurt, he prevented the proceedings from being assigned to prosecutors potentially reluctant to pursue the case. Further, he concentrated the investigations of all suspected Auschwitz perpetrators in a single Public Prosecutor's Office, so that for the first time a comprehensive investigation could be carried out on numerous defendants.

Fritz Bauer had placed the bar high for himself and the young prosecutors that he had personally assigned to the investigation. The crimes in Auschwitz were still largely unknown. Next to nothing had been published about the camp. The crime scene lay behind the Iron Curtain, and the research being carried out by the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum into the camp's history was all but unknown in West Germany. During the Cold War, then at its height, politicians, scientists, and the general public had no knowledge of the historical studies on Nazi crimes being produced in Communist East Germany.

The head of the Frankfurt Prosecutor's Office, Senior Prosecutor Heinz Wolf (1908-1984), was highly critical of Bauer's approach. He vehemently opposed Bauer's plan to transfer the proceedings underway in Stuttgart and Ludwigsburg to Frankfurt, insisting instead that the Frankfurt investigation be sent to Stuttgart and all cases involving Auschwitz be undertaken there. Senior Prosecutor Wolf's efforts to stop the Auschwitz investigations from being handled by his prosecutors were however thwarted by Bauer's political will. Making use of the prerogatives of his office, Prosecutor General Bauer pushed his program through, despite all administrative opposition. Auschwitz would be investigated in Frankfurt by prosecutors named by him and under his supervision and scrutiny.

When, in mid-1959, Bauer conferred the Auschwitz investigation to the two young prosecutors Joachim Kügler (1926–2012) and Georg Friedrich Vogel (1926–2007) – the actual models on whom the prosecutor Johann Radmann in LABYRINTH OF LIES is based – they had almost nothing in terms of proof. At first the scanty files from Stuttgart and Ludwigsburg, as well as those from the few investigations from other state prosecutor's offices against isolated Auschwitz perpetrators, provided the sole basis of their case. But the investigators scoured Allied "lists of war criminals" and, despite reservations in Bonn and elsewhere, also made contact with Poland. Bauer, supported by Hessian state authorities, backed up his prosecutors, enabling them in the summer of 1960 to travel to Poland and examine the archives of the memorial sites in Warsaw and Oświęcim (Auschwitz).

From the outset, the support of Hermann Langbein (1912-1995), the General Secretary of the International Auschwitz Committee, was very important. An organization of Auschwitz survivors, it opened its doors to the state prosecutors, enabling them to make contact with former Auschwitz inmates in Poland and Czechoslovakia. With Langbein's help, they contacted survivors around the world and were able to convince them of the importance of travelling to their murderers' homeland and giving depositions for the investigations and agreeing to submit to painful questioning about their suffering in Auschwitz.

For Langbein and the Auschwitz survivors, it was important that Hessen's Prosecutor General had himself been persecuted by the Nazis and experienced incarceration in a concentration camp and later exile. They could trust Bauer and his young prosecutors, who were untainted by association with the Nazis and represented a new generation and a new Germany.

The investigative work was deeply psychologically disturbing for the investigators too. On the one hand, they were confronted with suspects who completely denied all guilt or responsibility for the crimes. On the other, every day they had to take survivors' depositions and ask detailed and unavoidably painful questions about specific charges. They spent two long years investigating and questioning hundreds of witnesses: Auschwitz survivors, as well as former members of the SS at Auschwitz who had been part of the extermination machine but who could not be charged for lack of specific accusations.

Another difficulty in the investigations, as Prosecutor Kügler said in an interview, was the fact that the police "could not be relied on." The investigators worried that suspects would be tipped off ahead of time and allowed to flee. The two prosecutors had to not only prepare the majority of the pre-trial depositions but also provide details in court on the Nazis' policy of persecution and annihilation, as well as to reconstruct the crimes committed in Auschwitz.

By the middle of 1961, with substantial proof in hand, public prosecutors filed a motion to launch a pre-trial investigation as prescribed in the Code of Criminal Procedure. Heinz Düx (*1924), the Examining Magistrate named by the Frankfurt State Court, received from the Public Prosecutor's Office fifty-two folders containing countless interrogation transcripts. In October 1962, Düx concluded the pre-trial investigation, and the now three Public Prosecutors (Probationary Prosecutor Gerhard Wiese [*1928] had joined his initial two colleagues in the fall of 1962) began drafting the indictment. The latter was submitted to the State Court in April 1963 and, upon review the competent court opened the main proceedings. The trial itself began in the days immediately before Christmas. As the Frankfurt judiciary did not have at its disposal a large enough courtroom, the city hall assembly room in which municipal councilors usually met was temporarily requisitioned.

In the course of 183 trial days over some 20 months, the court heard from expert witnesses, questioned 360 other witnesses, and read countless documents into the record. The judgment, which was handed down on August 19 and 20, 1965, left Fritz Bauer, the prosecutors, and the survivors with ambivalent feelings.

The defendants Wilhelm Boger, Oswald Kaduk, Josef Klehr, Franz Hofmann, Stefan Baretzki, and Emil Bednarek (a "prisoner functionary"), who, acting alone, of their own initiative – that is, not under orders — were found guilty of murder and/or joint responsibility for murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. The defendant Hans Stark, who was a minor at the time of the crime, was sentenced to ten years' juvenile detention (the maximum sentence) for joint responsibility for murder. As for the crimes committed under order, the court found only three of the defendants to be accessories. In the cases of Oswald Kaduk, Franz Hoffmann, and Hans Stark, the Frankfurt judges found that the accused had executed of their own volition the orders they had received and had acted freely. For everyone else accused of participating in the mass crimes under order, the court found joint responsibility for murder. Even Robert Mulka and Karl Höcker, the commander's adjutants, who were active at the very center of the machinery of annihilation, were found by the court to be accomplices and as such sentenced to prison terms.

The verdict was appealed by the prosecutors, the accessory plaintiffs, and the defendants. But the Frankfurt verdict was upheld, except in the case of the SS doctor Franz Lucas who, in October 1970, was acquitted by Frankfurt State Court after a second trial.

By the fall of 1970, all the accused, with the exception of the six sentenced to life imprisonment, had been set free. They had, in consideration of time spent in pre-trial detention, either been released after serving two-thirds of their sentence or, as in the case of Robert Mulka, seen their sentences reduced.

But the Auschwitz trial was also a media event. National and international newspapers offered running coverage of it. Radio and television news reports reached avid audiences. In all, 20,000 spectators attended the courtroom trial. Many people were deeply affected by the trial, such that Auschwitz itself has become emblematic of German crimes against humanity. The trial brought to an end the period of keeping silent about the history of the National Socialist party and marked a turning point in how Germans dealt with their recent history: The name Auschwitz no longer drew a blank in their historical memory. In the end, the victims' voices testifying in court could not remain unheard. The survivors had put a human face on and brought to life the crimes against humanity that they had experienced. No longer was it possible for Germans to comfortably repress the past or to claim to have forgotten it.

For the public prosecutors who had immersed themselves in the Auschwitz crimes for six long years, the investigation and trial led to very different outcomes. Joachim Kügler left the judicial service and became a successful attorney. Georg Friedrich Vogel returned to the prosecutor's office in his hometown of Darmstadt, where he continued to prosecute National Socialist crimes. Gerhard Wiese continued to work on what were known as "old political cases" for several years before being promoted and transferred to a different section. The fact that these lawyers bore deep scars from their prosecution of National Socialist crimes was of interest to no one.

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Alexander Fehling

Johann Radmann

ALEXANDER FEHLING was born in Berlin in 1981 and attended the Hochschule für Schauspielkunst Ernst Busch from 2003 to 2007. He starred in stage roles at the Maxim Gorki Theater Berlin, the Berliner Ensemble, the bat Berlin, the Deutsches Theater Berlin, the Berliner Sophiensäle and the Theater am Neumarkt in Zurich. In 2006 he was awarded the O. E. Hasse Award of the Akademie der Künste for his role as the Prince in Robert Walser's "Schneewittchen." Fehling made his cinematic debut in 2007 in the role of Sven in Robert Thalheim's highly noted AND ALONG COME TOURISTS, for which he was awarded the Förderpreis Deutscher Film. In 2008 he starred in Hans-Christian Schmid's war criminal drama STORM and in Frieder Wittich's student comedy 13 SEMESTER. His role in Quentin Tarantino's theatrical hit INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS brought him international recognition. This was followed by the title role in GOETHE ! (2009, director: Philipp Stölzl), which won him the Metropolis Award as Best Actor, a nomination for the German Film Award and a Jupiter Award. In 2011 Fehling was honored as a German "Shooting Star" at the Berlinale. That same year Andres Veiel's IF NOT US, WHO? ran in competition there; in it, Fehling plays the role of Andreas Baader. In 2012 Fehling played alongside Ronald Zehrfeld and August Diehl in the GDR drama SHORES OF HOPE; in late 2013 he appeared in German theaters along with and under the direction of Michael Bully Herbig in BUDDY.

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Gert Voss

Fritz Bauer

"Gert Voss was a wizard, a truly grandiose actor. For me and the entire team, it was a great gift to be able to work with him, to see how he filled this role and endowed the larger-than- life character of Fritz Bauer with depth, wisdom and presence. It is a gift we are very thankful for. This experience will live on with us forever."
- Giulio Ricciarelli

GERT VOSS was born in Shanghai in 1941 and lived there until 1948. He spent the rest of his early years in Hamburg, Cologne, Heidenheim an der Brenz and on Lake Constance. He studied German and English literature and took private acting lessons with Ellen Mahlke, which were followed by theater engagements in Constance and other cities. It was in Constance that Voss was discovered by Hans-Peter Doll and hired for Brunswick and Stuttgart. He later transferred to Bochum with Claus Peymann and was invited to the Berliner Theatertreffen in 1983 in his role as Hermann in the "Hermannsschlacht." He appeared there in 20 productions altogether, and was chosen as actor of the year for seven times. Voss again transferred with Peymann in 1986, this time to the Burgtheater in Vienna. He was acclaimed there as Richard III, Shylock, Lear and in Thomas Bernhard's play "Ritter, Dene, Voss." Gert Voss worked with Peter Zadek, George Tabori, Luc Bondy, Andrea Breth, Thomas Langhoff and Thomas Ostermeier; played at the Berliner Ensemble and the Schaubühne Berlin. Among his guest roles, the title role in "Jedermann" at the Salzburg Festival deserves to be pointed out, a role he played during four summers (1995-1998). Gert Voss received many awards for his work, including the Gertrud Eysoldt Ring, the Kainz Medal, the Federal Order of Merit in 1989 and the Fritz Kortner Award in 1992. He was proclaimed Best Actor in Europe by the Times and received the Award of the International Theater Institute (ITI) in 1997 as well as the Nestroy Award in 2000. In 2012 the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung honored him with an homage as most significant actor of our time. Gert Voss has been seen repeatedly in highly select roles in movies and on television, for instance in Axel Corti's and Gernot Roll's TV miniseries RADETZKY MARCH (1994), in the historical two-parter BALZAC: A PASSIONATE LIFE (1999), on the big screen in Sebastian Schipper's SOMETIME IN AUGUST (2008) and, most recently, in Helmut Dietl's ZETTL (2012).

Gert Voss died on 13 July 2014 after a short but serious illness.

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André Szymanski

Thomas Gnielka

Born in Chemnitz in 1974, ANDRÉ SZYMANSKI attended the Berliner Hochschule für Schauspielkunst Ernst Busch. After his studies he worked at the Deutsches Theater before transferring to the Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz in 1999. He has been a permanent ensemble member of Hamburg's Thalia Theater since the 2009/2010 season. He has played in productions by Thomas Ostermeier, Sascha Waltz, Christina Paulhofer, Falk Richter, Luk Perceval and Antú Romero Nunes. In 2011 André Szymanski was honored with the renowned Ulrich Wildgruber Award. Next to his stage work Szymanski played in TV productions such as DIE FRAU AUS DEM MEER (2008), WIE MATROSEN (2010), and in the highly praised GESTERN WAREN WIR FREMDE (2012). He also starred in the feature films WOLFSBURG (2003) and IN THE SHADOWS (2009).

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Friederike Becht

Marlene Wondrak

FRIEDERIKE BECHT was born in Bad Bergzabern in 1986 and studied acting at the Universität der Künste in Berlin from 2004 to 2008. She worked at the Berliner Ensemble, the Stadttheater Freiburg, the Zurich Schauspielhaus and the Ernst Deutsch Theater in Hamburg. In 2009/2010 she was hired by the Schauspiel Essen, and has been a permanent member of the Schauspielhaus Bochum since the 2010/2011 season. Next to her extensive theater work with reputable directors such as Katharina Thalbach, Anselm Weber, Tina Engel and Peter Stein, Friederike Becht also starred in TV movies and feature films, playing in WESTWIND (2011), her first theatrical lead role. She was also seen in HANNAH ARENDT (2012), which was awarded the German Film Award in Silver in 2013, and in the TV Movie THE WAGNER-CLAN. In 2014 she again starred in films, namely BECKS LETZTER SOMMER and NACHSPIELZEIT.

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Giullo Ricciarelli

Director and Scriptwriter

The actor, director and producer GIULIO RICCIARELLI was born in Milan in 1965 and began his career after his training as a stage actor at the Otto Falckenberg Schule. He took on an engagement at the Theater Basel in 1989/90 and worked at the Staatstheater Stuttgart, the Kammerspiele in Munich, the Schauspiel Bonn (1992/94) and at the Bayerisches Staatsschauspiel. He also starred in many TV roles, and in feature films such as ROSSINI (1996). In 2000 he founded - together with Sabine Lamby - the naked eye filmproduction, which has made a name for itself with feature films by talented young directors, such as MADRID (2002) and THE FRIEND (2003). Next to his activity as producer, Ricciarelli also works as a director. His short film VINCENT was awarded the Golden Sparrow in 2005 and was nominated for the European Film Award. This was followed by further short films: in 2008 LOVE IT LIKE IT IS, and in 2009 LIGHTS, which was shown in the short-film competition of the film festival Max Ophüls Preis, and was also nominated for the European Film Award.

LABYRINTH OF LIES is Giulio Ricciarellí's cinematic feature film debut as director and scriptwriter.

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Elisabeth Bartel

Screenplay

Elisabeth Bartel was born in Graz, Austria, in 1968. After studying American literature in Munich, she headed from 1993 to 1997 a film distribution firm for international short films and documentaries which she co-founded. She then pursued studies for an MBA at the Wharton Business School in Philadelphia and worked briefly in a renowned business consultancy before returning to the media industry as member of the management of a Kinowelt Medien AG subsidiary. For ten years now she has been a script reader and consultant for Constantin Film, Eurimages, A Company Filmed Entertainment and many others. In 2009 she began with the research and subject development of LABYRINTH OF LIES.

LABYRINTH OF LIES is Elisabeth Bartel's debut as scriptwriter.

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Uli Putz

Producer | Claussen+Wöbke+Putz Filmproduktion

Born in Lauingen an der Donau in 1965, Uli Putz trained as a photographer after her secondary schooling. After working for several years in this profession, she undertook studies in the production and media economics department at the Hochschule für Fernsehen und Film in Munich, and graduated in 1993. She then worked as production head at Claussen+Wöbke. Since 1999 she has been teaching quite frequently at the its Cologne and the BAF Munich. Currently she is guest lecturer at the Hochschule für Fernsehen und Film (HFF München), as well as at the German-French master class at the Filmakademie Ludwigsburg.

Since 2004 she has been producer, general manager and partner at Claussen+Wöbke+Putz. Claussen+Wöbke+Putz (previously Claussen+Wöbke) was responsible in the past years for productions such as BEYOND SILENCE (1996), 23 (1999), CRAZY (2000), ANATOMY (2000), SUMMER STORM (2004), KRABAT (2008), MARIA, HE DOESN'T LIKE IT (2008), BOXHAGENER PLATZ (2010), 13 SEMESTER (2010), VAMPIRE SISTERS (2012) and THE LITTLE GHOST (2013).

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Sabine Lamby

Producer | naked eye filmproduction

Sabine Lamby was born in Frankfurt am Main in 1966. She studied journalism, German literature and political sciences in Mainz and Munich. During her studies she worked in various advertising agencies and production companies in Frankfurt and Munich (including Constantin Film and Senator Film). She gathered her first practical experiences in film shooting in Berlin as director's and production assistant. After a longish stint working with the director Romuald Karmakar in Munich, she became an assistant to the film-business management at various production firms and became independent in 2000 with Giulio Ricciarelli. The two founded the naked eye filmproduction in Munich. Their first theatrical film BIRTHDAY was made in 2001 under the direction of Stefan Jäger (Script Award Max Ophüls Festival). This was followed by further theatrical films, including MADRID (2003, Hessian Film Award) and THE FRIEND (2003, first steps award). In 2007 the naked eye filmproduction won the Federal short film award in gold for the film THE FROZEN SEA by Lukas Miko. In 2010 a branch office of the naked eye was established in Berlin and concentrates chiefly on subject development.

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Jakob Claussen

Producer | Claussen+Wöbke+Putz Filmproduktion

Born in Frankfurt am Main in 1961, he followed up his secondary education and leaving exam with various apprenticeships at film production companies and trained as industrial manager at the Henkel KGA. After a number of different tasks as location manager, he was definitively drawn to the film branch, and studied at the Hochschule für Fernsehen und Film (HFF) in Munich from 1986-89 in the department of feature films and TV films. He then spent two years as line producer at the HFF München in Department III, in which he also oversaw the development, financing, production, distribution and sales of short films and of several full-length TV films, along with various special projects as well.

In 1992 he and Thomas Wöbke founded the Claussen+Wöbke Filmproduktion GmbH. He has since been producing feature films.

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