Bavaria Fiction appoints Rotstein as head of fledgling documentary unit

German drama producer Bavaria Fiction is expanding into documentaries with a new department headed up by Emanuel Rotstein.

Emanuel Rotstein (photo: Moritz Brucker)

Rotstein has been appointed head of documentaries for the company, a subsidiary of Bavaria Film and ZDF Enterprises.

He is responsible for setting up the non-fiction production unit at Bavaria Fiction and is in the process of putting together a development team. Rotstein will report to Marcus Ammon, managing director of content.

Rotstein was previously senior director of programming at A+E Networks Germany for the linear and non-linear pay TV channels History and Crime+Investigation until December 2021.

During his time at A+E, Rotstein was responsible for documentaries including The Liberators: Why We Fought, about the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp by the US Army; The Eleventh Day – The Survivors of Munich 1972; Guardians of Heritage; and The Invisible Line – America’s Nazi Experiment about the infamous Third Wave social experiment.

Marcus Ammon (photo: Moritz Brucker)

Most recently, the true-crime format Face to Face was created under Rotstein’s leadership for Crime+Investigation.

Prior to that, he headed the editorial department of MPR Film und Fernsehproduktion GmbH from 2003 to 2010 and worked under the aegis of Maurice Philip Remy on the multiple award-winning documentaries Mogadischu, Max von Oppenheim and Kill Hitler.

Ammon said: “The demand for modern, high-quality non-fiction content has increased enormously in recent years. Therefore, I am very pleased that we have secured Emanuel Rotstein, a highly esteemed expert, and that we are now building up the production unit Bavaria Fiction Documentaries with him. Our goal is to give young and also established authors an environment of creative development, freedom and appreciation.”