Benjamin Cantu

Benjamin Cantu is German-Hungarian, having grown up in Berlin and Budapest. Initially he started to tell his stories with pencil, which made him embark his animation studies at the HFF Konrad Wolf in Babelsberg in 2000. After his BA he continued with directing studies at the German Film and Television School Berlin (dffb) in Berlin where he discovered his passion for documentary film-making. In his first Assistant Director job he became co-director in an Arte production about Jewish life in Hungary. Afterwards, Benjamin focused on creating one-off documentary pieces for Arte and 3sat, at times in cooperation with Nils Bökamp. Benjamin´s The World Belongs to Chaim, a portrait about an orthodox Jewish boy in Budapest, was awarded the Axel Springer Academy Prize for Young Journalists in 2007. Following the completion of several shorts and documentaries commissioned by international broadcasters, Harvest marks Benjamin’s debut as a feature film director in 2011. The film is a hybrid of documentary and fiction film making, involving over 30 nonprofessional actors from rural eastern Germany. Harvest was premiered on the 61st Berlinale, and screened in over 30 film festival with an ensuing worldwide distribution.