Hubertus Siegert: Founder and Producer

Siegert began his career as a filmmaker in the 1990s after he had previously completed his studies in history, art history and theatre studies and had worked as a graduate landscape architect. Early in his career, he worked in various areas of film production, including production management, sound design and editing. 

In 1996 he founded the production company S.U.M.O. Film, which in the following years produced successful cinema documentaries such as Berlin Babylon (2001), Klassenleben (2005) and Beyond Punishment (2015). The former opened the Panorama section of the Berlinale in 2001. In collaboration with director Götz Schauder, Siegert produced the 2016 feature film Conduct! Every Movement Counts, for which he exclusively took on the role of producer for the first time.

In 2019, Siegert launched his film Die Kinder der Utopie, the sequel to Klassenleben (2005), alongside an elaborate cinema-on-demand campaign that drew 20,000 viewers to 170 German cinemas in just one night.

From 2007 onwards Siegert was involved in the newly founded German Film Academy (Deutsche Filmakademie) for the documentary film section and was a board member from 2009 to 2017. In 2017-22 he was appointed to the BKM’s film funding jury for documentary film. In 2020, he founded the production company spicefilm.