Director, cinematographer and producer.
Jan Zabeil was born 1981 in Berlin, Germany. He studied cinematography at the University of Film and Television in Potsdam-Babelsberg (HFF/B) from 2003 to 2009 and meanwhile started to direct. In 2007/08 his short films "L.H.O." and "Was weiss der Tropfen davon" screened at over 100 international film festivals and were awarded several prizes. His debut feature „The river used to be a man“ premiered in Toronto in 2011. The film won several awards at international film festivals (among them: „Best new director – San Sebastian IFF 2011“, „Best cinematography, German critics association 2013“, "Audience Award" in Jeonju, Korea and "Best Sound" in Moscow). It screened at art institutions ( MoMA – NYC, National cinemateque, Mexico, Deutsche Kinemathek) – and was distributed in cinemas in Germany, Spain and Mexico.
In 2016 he wrote and directed "Three Peaks"/ "Drei Zinnen", starring Alexander Fehling and Bérénice Bejo, which premiered 2017 in Locarno in front of 7000 people and received the Variety Piazza Grande Award before going to Toronto and several other filmfestivals around the world. The film is distributed by NFP (in Germany ‘17/’18) and Greenwhich Entertainment (in the US ‘19) among several other territories and screening platforms, world sales: The Match Factory.
At the Berlinale 2018 he was one of Variety’s film magazine “Europeans to watch” and received the DEFA award for young German cinema for his past two films. The same year, he coproduced Veronika Kaserers Film “Überall wo wir sind”, which won the Kompass-Perspektive award at the Berlinale. Since then, he received funding for two different scripts, “Metanoia (WT)” and “Der Spion (WT)”, which he is currently working on.