Biography
Ruth Toma, born in 1956 in Bad Kötzting, Lower Bavaria, lives in Hamburg. The most beautiful day in her life was in 1996, when her television play brought her the first big success as an author, and won director Jo Baier the Bavarian television prize for directing. Toma had completed a nine-year "wandering" with the Fliegende Bauten Theater and had just completed her studies at the newly-founded postgraduate film program at the University of Hamburg – in the scriptwriting class of Peter Steinbach. Today, she is one of the most sought-after scriptwriters of her generation, and has quickly created a reputation for herself as a great writer: Romeo, Solino, Gloomy Sunday, Emma’s Luck, to name just a few; in her words, "the more tragic a comedy is, the better."
In the autumn of 2008, the film Friedliche Zeiten (Peaceful Times) – a family story set against the backdrop oft he Cold War, the construction of the Berlin Wall, and the division of Germany. In 2008, Detlev Buck filmed her screenplay adaptation of the report Wohin du auch gehst (Wherever You Go) from Benjamin Prüfer, about the dramatic love story between a German and an HIV-positive prostitute in Cambodia. Most recently, she wrote the screenplay for the critically-acclaimed film Der Junge muss an die frische Luft, based on the memoir of famous German comedian Hape Kerkeling’s childhood.
