Matthijs Wouter Knol is programme manager of the Berlinale Talent Campus since September 2008.
Knol was born in the Netherlands in 1977 and studied Contemporary History at Leiden University and at the Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome. He worked as a freelance journalist until 2001 before joining in Pieter van Huystee Film, a renowned and internationally award-winning production company in Amsterdam. Becoming Head of Development in 2004, he focused on the development, financing and international co-production of documentary film projects. He worked with acclaimed filmmakers Heddy Honigmann, Peter Delpeut, Ramon Gieling and Mani Kaul, being associate producer for various documentary films, and co-produced the DVD edition of Johan van der Keuken’s digitally re-mastered collected works with ARTE Vidéo.
In 2007, Matthijs Wouter Knol started working for the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), spreading his activity between the co-production and sales markets and the IDFAcademy training programme. Managing the latter programme, he initiated IDFAcademy’s Summer School, focusing on strengthening the narrative structure of scripts and rough cuts.
In addition, he has worked since 2001 as a producer for Foundation Arts&Ex, organizing several photography exhibitions, lectures, video-installations, and retrospectives - all closely related to cinema and in collaboration with the Netherlands Film Museum, the Wexner Center for the Arts (Columbus, Ohio), MoMA, Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam) and Galerie Colette (Paris). Knol has been working as a narrator for documentary films and served as a board member of the Netherlands Association of New Filmmakers NFTVM.
In September 2008, together with project manager Christine Tröstrum, he became head of the Berlinale Talent Campus at the Berlin International Film Festival.
