A-FILM Productions

Matthias Aicher is the co-founder of A-FILM Productions. Trained as a photographer, he worked as a professional fashion photographer in Milan, Italy. In Germany, he produced and directed his own films such as “Death and the Maiden” and “To Malmö, please”. He worked as crew member in various German film productions and as director and producer for Berlin based film production companies. In 2001, he enrolled in the Moscow State Film Institute (VGIK) to study film direction (master: Sergej Miroshnitshenko). He has gained ample film shooting experience in Russia and deep knowledge of land and people. Since 2002, he has directed several documentary films in cooperation with the German-French TV channel ARTE. His mother tongue is German, he is fluent in Russian and English.

Anna Vorobyeva has graduated from Udmurt State University, where she was studying economics. After that she decided to contribute her self more arts and marketing than finance and accounting. In 2008 she got her master degree in International Marketing in Plechanov Academy of Economics, that gave her more in-depth knowledge of marketing for international companies in Russian market and professional command in English. Since May 2008 she joined A-FILM team and now she is coordinating A-FILM festival and other projects. Her strengths are in PR, communications and advertising. She is good in presenting ideas and involving people into the projects.

Tanja Cummings (born in Berlin) studied philosophy and literature and majored with a master degree in philosophy in 1996 (Freie Universität Berlin). Since then she has worked on various film projects as a storyboard artist (www.tc-storyboards.de), writer and producer (fictional & documentary films). In 2003, she co-founded the “European Association for East/West Rapprochement" (www.eva-verein.de), an exchange platform for people and organizations from Eastern and Western Europe. Her current projects are documentary films such as "Lodzermensch" (as producer, writer, director), "Moltke" (as writer and director)...

Thomas Schmidt is the “Russia expert” at A-FILM. Since 1996, he has worked for a couple of dozen documentary film productions throughout Russia. He knows all the organizational steps necessary before production can start. Thanks to his many travels through Russia he built up a network of contacts for location scouting, casting and other preparatory work. Thomas Schmidt speaks fluent English, French and Russian, some Italian, and Spanish. He has lived in Russia since 1994.

Thomas Schmidt stammt aus München und lebt seit 1994 in Russland. Seit 1996 hat er als Produzent eine Vielzahl von Dokumentationen in ganz Russland realisiert. Als Praktiker kennt er alle notwendigen Schritte von der Vorbereitung bis zum Abschluss eines Projekts. Durch seine langjährige Tätigkeit hat er ein weitverzweigtes Netzwerk in ganz Russland, das vom location scout, casting bis zum eigentlichen Film reicht. Thomas Schmidt spricht fließend Englisch, Französisch, Russisch und Deutsch, daneben auch etwas Italienisch und Spanisch.