Valeska Grisebach (b. 1968) is a German filmmaker whose work explores human relationships and the tensions between individual experience and social structures. After studying philosophy and German studies in Berlin, Munich and Vienna, she went on to study directing at the Film Academy Vienna, where her teachers included Peter Patzak, Wolfgang Glück and Michael Haneke. Her debut feature, Be My Star (2001), received a FIPRESCI Special Mention at the Toronto International Film Festival and the Grand Jury Award at the Turin Film Festival. Her second feature, Longing (2006), was selected for the Competition at the Berlin International Film Festival; in 2017, Western premiered in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes Film Festival and subsequently reached Portuguese theaters — marking the moment Grisebach’s cinema was introduced to us. In 2026, she returned to the festival with The Dreamed Adventure, which received the Jury Prize. The film will have its Portuguese premiere at the 20th edition of LEFFEST, in Competition.
