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7:00 PM

Goethe-Kino - Melanie Liebheit, Gereon Wetzel: She-Chef

Film|Cinema Screening

  • Goethe-Institut London, London

  • £6, £3 Concessions and for Goethe-Institut language students & library members.
  • Part of series: Goethe-Kino 2026
Tickets via Eventbrite

In a professional kitchen, a young woman bends over a dish to focus on preparing a dish She Chef ©Horse & Fruits,Brüning & Golafshan & Herbert,GbR

In a professional kitchen, a young woman bends over a dish to focus on preparing a dish She Chef ©Horse & Fruits,Brüning & Golafshan & Herbert,GbR

A sensitive documentary about a young chef on her journey through the kitchens of renowned European restaurants, and a reflection on the balance between career and quality of life.
 
At 25, Agnes Karrasch has already won the International Youth Chef World Championship as a member of the Austrian national team. But this does not make her a fully accomplished chef. Instead, her “journeyman years” are just beginning, taking her from one fine dining restaurant to another across Europe: from the more classic Vendôme in Bensberg near Cologne, to the more avant-garde Disfrutar in Barcelona, and finally to the sustainable Koks in the Norwegian Faroe Islands. In each new kitchen, she must start over, find her place, and prove herself as a woman in a male-dominated world.

Close up of a organge coloured dessert consisting of round elments on a wooden platter She Chef ©Horse & Fruits,Brüning & Golafshan & Herbert,GbR

Tyrannical head chefs, clattering pots and pans, sizzling hot stoves, sweat and looming nervous breakdowns – in TV and cinema, the world of professional cooking often resembles a kind of hell. Yet the filmmakers Melanie Liebheit and Gereon Wetzel deliberately avoid dramatic exaggeration. Instead, they focus on offering a precise and intimate insight into different approaches to professional cooking, as seen through the perspective of their young female protagonist. Not only the ingredients differ, but also the philosophies, and Agnes must decide which path to follow and to what extent she wants cooking to shape her life. The film repeatedly raises questions about the relationship between work and quality of life, as well as between career and family. At the same time, it has much to offer that stimulates both the appetite and the desire to travel.

Panorama of a fjord landscape. In the middle distance, three people are walking toward a pier that leads into the water. She Chef©Horse & Fruits,Brüning & Golafshan & Herbert,GbR

Austria, Germany 2022, 105 min. With English subtitles.
Directed by Melanie Liebheit and Gereon Wetzel. With Agnes Karrasch.

Melanie Liebheit

Melanie Liebheit was born in Münster in 1973. She studied ethnology in Munich and then in Manchester, where she graduated with a Master of Arts with distinction. From 2001, she worked for Documentary Campus e.V. in Munich until 2011. During that time, Liebheit also successfully applied to the Hochschule für Fernsehen und Film in Munich (HFF), where she studied documentary film and television journalism. In collaboration with Anja Lupfer, she directed Das einzelne Bild ist gar nichts - Ein Portrait des Kameramanns Thomas Mauch (2004). Her feature-length documentary Wiedergeboren in Westfalen (2008), which explores Europe's largest Tamil Hindu temple in the small Westphalian town of Hamm-Uentrop, premiered at the DOK Leipzig festival.

While still a student, Liebheit was one of the founders of the documentary film festival Nonfiktionale in Bad Aibling in 2007, which she has co-directed with Tamara Danicic since 2016. They are also team assistants in the Department of Image Design at the HFF.
Collaborating with Gereon Wetzel, Liebheit directed the documentary Die Kunst der Widerrede (Art of the Argument, 2017), which follows four law students who aim to qualify for the Jessup Moot Court, the most internationally renowned Law of Nations competition. Continuing her partnership with Wetzel, she began shooting the documentary She Chef (AT/DE) in early 2020. It portrays a young Austrian woman's journey through top international kitchens during her wandering years, with the Covid pandemic providing a crucial twist. She Chef premiered in October 2022 at the DOK Leipzig festival and received the FFF documentary sponsorship award at Munich's DOK.fest 2023. Subsequently, in May 2023, She Chef was released in German cinemas.

Gereon Wetzel

Gereon Wetzel was born in 1972 in Bonn, Germany. After studying archaeology in Heidelberg, he began studying documentary film at the Hochschule für Fernsehen und Film in Munich (HFF) in 2000. During his studies, he produced the medium-length documentary Sprechproben (2004), in which he explores German dialect borders and regional terminology. Wetzel's feature-length graduation film Castells (2006), about the Catalan tradition of human towers ("castells") was screened at numerous international festivals; at the Munich Documentary Film Festival, it was awarded the Bavarian Radio and Telepool Prize.
Together with filmmaker Jörg Adolph and producer Ingo Fliess, Gereon Wetzel founded the DVD label and streaming portal DocCollection in the spring of 2008, initially for their own films and later as a distributor and platform for the works of other documentary filmmakers.
As an author and filmmaker, Wetzel has produced numerous documentaries on a wide variety of topics, often also serving as director of photography and editor. How to Make a Book With Steidl (2010), about the photo book publisher Gerhard Steidl and his collaboration with photographers from all over the world, received the Documentary Film Award of the Goethe-Institut at the Duisburg Film Week and the Golden Dove for Best Documentary Film at the DOK Leipzig Festival.
El Bulli - Cooking in Progress (2010), Wetzel's film about the cooking laboratory of the pioneering Spanish avant-garde chef Ferran Adrià, attracted attention at festivals around the world. At the German Camera Award 2011, the film won Best Editing (Anja Pohl). At DOK.fest Munich, it was awarded the FFF Documentary Film Sponsorship Award, and it was also nominated for the German Documentary Film Award 2013.
Together with Jörg Adolph, Wetzel realised Zündfunk Radio Show (2014), a documentary about the influential music and culture magazine "Zündfunk" on Bayern 2. He also directed Carlos Saura - Fotograf (2016), a film about the legendary Spanish director and his photographic life's work. In Konstantin Grcic - Design is Work (2017), Wetzel observed the world-renowned Munich designer and his team at work. Additionally, Die Kunst der Widerrede (Art of the Argument, 2017, co-directed with Melanie Liebheit) followed four law students aiming to qualify for the prestigious international law competition, the Jessup Moot Court.
Gereon Wetzel created a highly personal documentary film titled Sommerfahrt - Zeit heilt keine Wunden (2022). In this film, he reunites with companions from his scouting days 30 years ago, after the Aloisiuskolleg, the group's affiliated institution, was discovered to have been involved in massive sexual assaults over decades. Wetzel's work on this film earned him a nomination for the Grimme Award.
In another collaboration with Melanie Liebheit, Wetzel directed the documentary She Chef (AT/DE) from early 2020, which was filmed during the COVID-19 pandemic.  She Chef premiered at the DOK Leipzig festival in October 2022 and received the FFF sponsorship award at the Munich DOK.fest 2023. 

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