Q: A lot of your work explores people in transition, whether through migration, displacement, identity, or the search for a place to belong. What draws you to stories that exist in this kind of “in-between” space?

A: I'm a wanderer between worlds. I grew up comfortably in a German village enclosed by hills and forests. My mother left her home country at age 16. We kept traveling between countries, until the Balkan wars came and my Croatian family was displaced. I remember my parents organizing aid trucks and bulletproof vests for the region.

Perhaps that's why I'm drawn to capture images of beauty and grace in the face of tragedy, to tell existential stories of people on the road. Picking up the camera might be an act of transforming my own desperation about the world into a sense of agency. I‘m searching for proof of the human soul caught between violent forces, be it war, exploitation, or environmental collapse.

Q: When you work with people whose stories are particularly sensitive, how do you decide what to show, what to leave out, and how much of your own perspective to bring into the story?

A: As a storyteller, I like the idea of being in service to others. That means using whatever privilege I have to amplify stories that aren't told enough. But when you point a camera at a real person, you immediately enter a space of unequal power. That’s why I start by listening, often for months without turning the camera on. For me, the relationship outlasts the filming. Every decision in the edit room, deciding what to keep and what to cut, comes down to protecting the person’s dignity without sugarcoating the reality of their situation. I'm not there to save someone or simplify anything; I’m there to capture people and places in all their contradictions, their messiness and glory.