Marcel Mettelsiefen

6X BAFTA award-winning filmmaker

Marcel Mettelsiefen is an Academy Award®–nominated, six-time BAFTA-winning documentary filmmaker, cinematographer, and producer. With a background in conflict photojournalism, he has spent over two decades documenting some of the world’s most complex and volatile environments. His work is defined not just by where he films, but how he films: with empathy, precision, and a striking visual sensitivity.

Known for his observational style and poetic visual language, Mettelsiefen often shoots his own material, working with minimal crew to preserve intimacy and authenticity. His approach is rooted in trust — built gradually, often over months or years — allowing him access to fragile emotional spaces rarely captured on camera. He has a particular gift for working with children and families in high-risk environments, portraying their lives with dignity and emotional depth. The camera, for him, is not a tool of extraction, but a companion — a way of bearing witness without interference.

Central to his work is the belief that nuance matters. In an increasingly polarised world, Mettelsiefen rejects simplistic binaries and instead seeks emotional truth. His stories are layered, complex, and often unfold in ethically fraught spaces where there are no easy answers. Whether filming in Aleppo, Kabul, or the West Bank, his aim is not to represent sides, but to humanise individuals caught in the crossfire of ideology, violence, and history.

His breakthrough film Watani: My Homeland (2016), following a Syrian family’s escape from Aleppo, was nominated for an Academy Award and won a Peabody, a Grierson, and multiple Emmy Awards. His four-part series Afghanistan: The Wounded Land presents five decades of Afghan history through rare archive and deeply personal testimony. In Her Hands(Netflix, 2022) captures the final years of Afghanistan’s democracy through the story of one of its youngest female mayors. His most recent film, State of Rage (2024), explores generational trauma in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and won two BAFTA Awards in 2025 for Best Current Affairs Documentary and Best Cinematography.

Despite the global scale of his subjects, Mettelsiefen’s focus is always intimate: how systems of power manifest in the daily, the domestic, the emotional. He believes beauty and dignity can—and must—exist even in the darkest places. His filmmaking is as much about listening as it is about documenting, and his strongest stories are those in which his presence disappears, allowing the viewer to connect directly with the people on screen.

Marcel Mettelsiefen is a Canon Ambassador, represented by WME, and the founder of Duskwater Films, a Barcelona-based production company developing international feature documentaries and series.