Claudia Tomassini

has represented numerous films in competition and other sections at the main international festivals as international publicist over the past ten years .

Because of her knowledge of people and structures in the European film industry, from 2000 to 2007 she advised the Italian Trade Commission in Germany on market strategies for Italian productions abroad. Since 2004 she divides her time between New York, Germany and Italy and has promoted numerous film festivals and film related events in New York.

Claudia has long-standing client relationships with private and public institutions such as Filmitalia, whose Italian reception during the Berlin Film Festival, the official party hosted by the Italian delegation, she has been organizing since 2000. These events have taken place in high-profile locations such as Deutsche Guggenheim Museum – Atrium Deutsche Bank, Hamburger Bahnhof and Museum für Kommunikation. Among the German institutions she has worked with are the Berlin International Filmfestival, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kino Arsenal - Freunde der Deutsche Kinemathek, Filmmuseum Berlin, Filmmuseum Potsdam, and the Filmfest Munich.

In the US, she has worked with institutions such as the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Film Society of Lincoln Center - Walter Reade Theater, the Italian Cultural Institute in New York, Casa Italiana Zerilli Marimo’ at New York University, and the Fitzgerald Foundation. She started her career as a freelance journalist in her native Rome. Moving to Berlin in 1996, she was responsible for the film programming and press office of the Cultural Department of the Italian Embassy and the Italian Cultural Institute in Berlin until 2003. During that time, she created several retrospectives and founded the Immaginale section of interfilm, the International Short Film Festival Berlin.

Claudia graduated in film criticism in 1996 from La Sapienza University in Rome with a thesis on the myth of Manhattan in early 20th century avant-garde films.

Carsten Siebert

started his collaboration with Claudia Tomassini in the late 1990s. Together, they have worked on PR and related issues for numerous films at most of the big international festivals. Their collaboration continues to this day, in parallel with his other professional assignments.

Carsten is currently director of the Daniel Barenboim Foundation that supports the well-known West-Eastern Divan Orchestra and many music and education projects, mostly in Israel and Palestine. 

From 2004 to 2009, Carsten was Executive Director of the Byrd Hoffman Water Mill Foundation that operates the Watermill Center on the East End of Long Island, an interdisciplinary international laboratory for performance. The Foundation with offices in New York also manages the vast collection of art works collected by its founder, Robert Wilson, and the archives documenting his work and collaborators. He was also Managing Director of RW Works, Ltd, the entity organizing Wilson’s creative work.

From 1999 to 2004, Carsten worked for the international management consulting firm McKinsey & Company, specializing in public sector, media, and telecommunication clients. He advised many cultural institutions from film festivals and museums to opera houses and orchestras. Thematically, his focus lay on post merger management for multinational companies and internal and external corporate communications.Carsten studied philosophy and English and German Literatures in Munich, Berlin, and Philadelphia. After a short stint at the United Nations in New York, he returned to academia, receiving a Ph.D. in philosophy from the Humboldt University in Berlin in 1998 where he taught until 1999.He regularly lectures on art administration at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland and Leuphana University Lüneburg, Germany. In addition to his academic publications, he has written articles on a wide range of topics, including winning strategies for print publishers, Italian movies of the 1990s, and the influence of modes of presentation on the way we think. He has been a member of many panels or juries, for example at the literature festival steirischer herbst, Austria, or the Hamptons International Film Festival, USA.