Andrei Ujica

Ujica studied literature in Timisoara, Bucharest and Heidelberg. He moved to Germany in 1981. In 1990 he began making films. Together with Harun Focki they created Videograms of a Revolution, a film that has become a standard work in Europe when referring to relationships between political power and the media and the end of the Cold War, and which was listed by the magazine “Les Cahiers du Cinema” as one of the top 10 subversive films of all time.
His following work, Out of the Present, tells the story of cosmonaut Sergei Krikalyov who spent ten months in outer space on board of the MIR, while on Earth the Soviet Union was falling apart.
The film has been compared with classics such as 2001: A Space Odyssey and Solaris and is considered one of the non-fiction cult films of the nineties.
In 2001 Ujica became a Professor of Film at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design. He founded the ZKM Film Institute in 2002 and is currently its director.
His 2010 film The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu is a lengthy flashback that takes place in the mind of Ceausescu, and the images of the racconto as well as those of the trial come from official archive footage; Ujica’s view is shown not so much in the framings as in the montage of the material.