Biography

Michael Koch is a young Swiss actor who received his training at the Actor's Academy at the "Junges Theater Basel", in Switzerland. Some of his many theater credits include the leading role in "Playboy of the Western World", featured at the Theaterspektakel in Zürich. He also played in "Die Schaukel", a theater play which won the 2001 Jury Prize and Audience Award at the Impulse Off-Theater Festival, and was invited to the prestigious Vienna Festwochen in 2002. His notable debut in cinema was in the motion picture "Achtung, Fertig, Charlie!" ("Ready, Steady, Charlie!"). A Swiss movie which became, during its 8 weeks of theater projection in Switzerland, the most successful film for years to be released in the country. It was nominated for the 2004 Swiss Film Prize.
- IMDb mini biography by: Caesar - Cinesia.CH

Michael Koch is born in Lucerne in 1982. From 2003 to 2008, he studies at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne [KHM], working as an actor in parallel. During his studies, he makes the short films We Are the Wir sind dir treu (2005), Beckenrand (2006) and Polar (2008). All three films are acclaimed at international festivals and receive many awards. "Polar" receives a Special Mention at the 2009 Berlinale and wins the German Camera Award and the German Short Film Award in 2009. After his studies, he also works as a set director for the Theater Kaserne in Basel. Marija (2016) is his debut feature film.
- IMDb mini biography by: Locarno Film Festival

2004: Named as one of European films' Shooting Stars by European Film Promotion.

Mother tongue is a German dialect only used in Switzerland, nevertheless he speaks English perfectly well and knows a bit of French.

Studied at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne (KHM) from 2003 to 2008.

Lives in Berlin, Germany. [2016].

[on Marija (2016)] I'm interested in a cinema that shows and does not explain, that focuses on people and their often contradictory needs in a formally rigorous way, telling stories of people struggling with inner, hidden conflicts. [2016]

[on his next project] As in Marija (2016) it's also based on detailed documentary research. My films' development work is always about 'finding' and not 'inventing'. (...) I am focusing on a person who meshes very different and contradictory needs. It is a movie about love and death and life, set in the Swiss mountains. [2016]