ABOUT

Hello, I’m Lena, the founder of Countercuts

This is a space shaped by cinema that refuses to behave.

I’m Lena – film curator, writer, moderator, and cultural worker based in Cologne, Germany. My work lives where images become arguments, where pleasure meets politics, and where cinema is allowed to be strange, unruly and emotional.

I work across film festivals, independent cinemas, publications and live formats, curating programmes, writing about film, hosting conversations and creating spaces for filmlovers. I’m interested in how films circulate, how they are framed, and how meaning is produced not only on screen but around it – in programmes, discussions, footnotes and heated arguments.

My editorial lens is rooted in queer feminist thinking, cultural politics and a commitment to cinema as a collective practice. I care about representation, bodies, desire, genre, form, and the power of images to disrupt dominant narratives. I’m drawn to films that linger and to voices that exist outside institutional canons.

My writing starts from lived experience: from a body that watches, feels and remembers, and from the conviction that film criticism can never be detached from the live that shapes our gaze.

This magazine is not about verdicts or rankings. It’s about attention.
About looking closely, writing honestly, and taking cinema seriously without stripping it of joy.

A place for critical love & messy feelings.