Lullaby

Sergej Waldrat is a German-Ukrainian scriptwriter and director. He was born on November 2, 1992 in Lviv, Ukraine to a multinational family with Ukrainian, Latvian, Azerbaijani, Balkan and Ashkenazi-Jewish roots.
Sergej moved with his mother to Germany when he was 11. Homelonging made him root for Ukrainian culture and language, and especially through movies and music. In 2012 he enrolled in IFS Cologne to study Screenwriting (grad. 2016, Bachelor degree). His graduation script CITY OF LION was purchased by a local production company. Between 2016-2020 he was busy in multiple productions as a freelancer in various positions.
In 2020 he shot two short films in Ukraine. Shooting on the Carpathians brought him back to his childhood on the mountains. By filming in the Carpathian Mountains he also gained valuable experience of shooting abroad with multinational team and strengthened his feeling to dig into his roots through filmmaking.
To find his handwriting in directing, Sergej enrolled in 2021 into MA studies Film at the IFS Cologne (grad. August 2023). In the ifs-graduation documentary FROM DEPARTURE TO DEPARTURE (2023) he directed one of three stories, focussing on the iraqi journalist Abbas.
Since the beginning of the war he regularly visits Ukraine for humanitarian reasons and to get together with his family over there in difficult times. Stories of survivors of Bucha pushed him to shoot short LULLABY outside the frame of his tuition.
Recently Sergej was invited to lead a full-circle filmmaking workshop for refugee kids from Ukraine to support their cultural integration in Germany.
His debut feature film HEARTBEAT is scheduled to be shot in 2025 and has been invited to the official programme of the Sofia Meetings 2024.