Name: Martin GROF
Date of birth: 17th April, 1982
Place of birth: Czechoslovakia

I got the first compact camera for my 8th birthday. I immediately knew I had to work with "pictures" that can tell stories.

During my studies at the high school in Vienna (Austria), I wrote and directed a film on a borrowed Hi8 camcorder. The crew and actors were my school colleagues. When the principal of the school saw the film, he rented a cinema for screening the film to other classes from different schools, and the local news paper called it the "The School Project of the Year".

I started working in the TV business as a camera assistant when I was 16 years old. When I was 22, I already directed music videos for popular singers in the Czechoslovakian area and I also was the director for the national Slovak TV, where I directed all genres including Live shows. In 2012 I was hired for the XXX Olympic games in London, I operated 6 robotic cameras.

But I always knew I want to do films. I wanted to tell stories! So I tried several times to get funds from the Ministry of Culture. I only wanted 100.000 Euro for a feature film. They told me, it is impossible to do a film with such a small budget and they refused my application.

I decided to save some money and I invested it in my first feature film "Excursion", which I shot in London, UK, in 2018, with a micro budget of 50.000 Euro.