Biography:

Laila Stieler was born in 1965 in Neustadt/Orla, East Germany, and went to school in Berlin. After graduating from secondary school, she worked at Elektrokohle Lichtenberg. From 1986 to 1990, she studied dramaturgy at the Hochschule für Film und Fernsehen in Potsdam-Babelsberg (now Filmuniversität Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF). Since graduating, she has worked as a freelance scriptwriter, dramaturg and producer for cinema and television. Working with directors such as Andreas Dresen, Doris Dörrie, Dagmar Hirtz, Tim Trageser and Maria Schrader, she has helped create many awarded films.

Noticeable is Stieler’s long-time collaboration with director Andreas Dresen that goes back to the late 1980s, when they were both students at the film academy. Stieler co-wrote the script for Dresen’s debut feature film, Stilles Land, a comedy set shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall and which took the 1993 International Film Festival in Berlin by storm, receiving both the Hesse Film Award and the German Critics’ Award. It was followed by many other collaborations including Die Polizistin, the winner of the Coup de Coeur Jury Prize at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival, Wolke 9, about love and sexual intimacy in old age, and 

Gundermann, a feature film about the East German singer-songwriter. She also wrote the screenplay for Dresen’s drama Rabiye Kurnaz gegen George W. Bush, based on true events, about Rabiye Kurnaz, whose son Murat was imprisoned as an alleged terrorist in the U.S. prison camp Guantanamo. The film premiered in competition at the 2022 Berlinale International Film Festival, where Stieler won a Silver Bear for Best Screenplay. Her next screenplay, In Liebe, eure Hilde (dir. Andreas Dresen), a biographical film about Hilde Coppi, a member of the Red Orchestra, is currently in post-production.

Laila Stieler received much praise for her six-part television series Tina Mobil (dir. Richard Huber), about a Berlin woman with three kids who starts a mobile bakery after she loses her job. The script for this humorous series was awarded by the Deutsche Fernsehakademie.

As producer, Stieler worked successfully on numerous TV films, including Ein verlockendes Angebot and Neufeld, mitkommen!. And from 1996 to 2020, Laila Stieler has taught Creative Producing at the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg and the Hochschule für Film und Fernsehen in Munich.

Currently, Stieler is working on a film adaption of the autobiography Der Tastenficker: An was ich mich erinnern kann (2017) written by Flake, the keyboarder of the East German band Feeling B and later Rammstein. The film script will focus on the contradictory time in the late 1980s when the anarchic young punk band conquers East German stages while the country is in its final days. (Written in Nov. 2023)

Festivals & Awards:

Bibliography & More:

Interview, Writing about Daily Life. Amherst, MA: DEFA Film Library Newsletter. Feb. 2011.