RITA LENGYEL born in West Germany, grows up in a Hungarian-German patchwork family in which music, fine arts, theatre & film are part of everyday life. Her father Károly Lengyel is an established Art-Painter, the mother works as a curator of Contemporary-Art, and stepfather Gábor Bódy is an internationally recognized filmmaker. During Rita Lengyel’s career as an actress, she completes her directing Diploma-degree at the HFF Film University Potsdam-Babelsberg. In her entire work, Rita Lengyel is constantly searching for images of identity and deals with this topic in her films: In BERLIN BUDAPEST a mother searches for the father of her child. LIVING IN C MINOR is a portrait of internationally known Roma musicians. The feature-length documentary MY HUNGARY IN BERLIN is her personal family portrait in the midst of a transnational society in today's Berlin. For her film BERLIN BUDAPEST Rita Lengyel is awarded the DEFA Foundation's Young Talent Award, among others.
As an actress & filmmaker Rita Lengyel works both, behind and in front of the camera, she knows both sides. As a teenager, she is already in front of the camera and gaining her first impressions of working on set. In 1988 the then fifteen-year-old's acting talent is finally discovered: director Oliver Hirschbiegel cast her in a role in his film THE LOON and just one year later she works with Klaus Emmerich in his film PIZZA COLONIA.The young actress takes lessons in Cologne and Los Angeles and appears in films by well-known directors such as DIE MANNS by Heinrich Breloer, BLUT AN DER WIEGE by Markus Fischer and DAS BESTE STÜCK by Oliver Schmitz. She receives leading roles also in cinema-productions such as DOMENICA by Peter Kern, NADINE by Ecki Ziedrich and MORTAL BEAUTY by Markus Goller. In BERLIN CALLING which becomes a so called "Berliner cult-film” by Hannes Stöhr, Rita Lengyel plays the female lead alongside the musician Paul Kalkbrenner. Later she stars in EDWARD HOPPER – VU PAR and GLOBAL PLAYER, once again in collaboration with filmmaker Hannes Stöhr. Also she becomes a lecturer for Staging, Story Development and Film History at various universities.
