director, producer, journalist

about.

Benjamin Hindrichs is an award-winning journalist, director, producer and writer.

His films sit at the boundaries of non-fiction and explore bodies, landscapes and orality as archives where past and present fold into each other. DARU/N, his first short documentary, has been invited to international film festivals such as San Sebastian, Raindance and Sitges, and was preselected for the 2026 Goya Awards. His first feature film Sijniyya: The Clandestine Music of Saydnaya is currently in postproduction. In 2025, he founded the production company El Gallo Amazónico Films.

His journalistic work focuses on extremism, conflict and migration. It has been published in, among others, ZEIT, Krautreporter, Al Jazeera English, Mongabay, Mediapart, Le Monde, La Repubblica, Follow the Money, Diari Ara, El Salto, and Daraj. In 2025, he published a book about the global rise of the far-right.

Born in 1995, Ben holds a B.A. in Governance and Public Policy from the University of Passau, and a M.A. in Journalism, Media and Globalisation from Aarhus University and Charles University Prague, while currently pursuing a Master’s in Creative Documentary at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona.

He speaks German, English, Spanish, Portuguese and Catalan, and is trained in OSINT, trauma-informed reporting and working in high-risk environments.

His work has been supported by grants and fellowships from, among others, Film- und Medienstiftung NRW, Filmförderungsanstalt (FFA), Journalismfund.eu, Investigative Journalism for Europe (IJ4EU), Earth Journalism Network, Heinz-Kühn-Foundation and Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes.

Contact: b.hindrichs (at) proton.me

films.

Sijniyya: The Clandestine Music of Saydnaya

Logline: Eight former political prisoners reconstruct how they created a clandestine music scene in Syria’s most notorious prison.

Info: Feature Documentary, currently in postproduction, financed by Filmförderungsanstalt (FFA) and Film und Medienstiftung NRW.

Logline: Three brothers revisit memories of forced labor on a Volkswagen farm in the Brazilian Amazon, exploring the objectification of bodies, the lingering echoes of slavery and how humor turns into resistance.

Info: Short documentary (2026).

Landmarks

Valdeci, O Morador Do Recanto da Floresta

Logline: In the southern part of Brazil's Amazon region, a man renews the fence of his secluded house – a shelter from the invisibilized violence inscribed in his surroundings and his own past, invading the present through a glimpse of a TV report.

Info: Short documentary (2027).