My Way to Olympia: Filmmaker Bio

Niko von Glasow (Director/Writer/Co-Producer) started his filmmaking career by carrying beer crates and making coffee for Rainer Werner Fassbinder. He went on to study film at New York University and the Lodz Film School in Poland. His first feature film, Wedding Guests (1990), won the German Film Critics Award at the Berlin International Film Festival. Von Glasow followed up with Marie's Song (1994), starring Sylvie Testud in her first film role, and The Edelweiss Pirates (2004), which starred Bela B. Felsenheimer, Jan Decleir and Anna Thalbach and was awarded the Grand Prix du Jury at Ciné-Jeune de l'Aisne.

My Way to Olympia completes Niko's trilogy about the lives and feelings of people living with disabilities. For the darkly humorous, politically incorrect NoBody's Perfect (2008), he convinced 11 other people born with disabilities from thalidomide to pose for a nude calendar. The film won the German Film Award for Best Documentary, brought him worldwide recognition and helped fuel a successful campaign to raise the compensation for the 2,700 surviving victims of thalidomide in Germany. In Everything Will Be Alright (2012), the filmmaker documents the making of a unique live theatrical production that he wrote and developed. The cast includes actors with physical and mental disabilities.

Niko founded the Tibetan Film School and holds talks and workshops on script writing and directing worldwide. He currently divides his time between London and Cologne. He is currently developing several projects, including Shoot Me. Kiss Me. Cut!, a film about 12 young filmmakers trying to achieve fame and fortune with their version of Romeo and Juliet, and Girl From Tibet, which tells the story of a young nomadic girl who is accidentally sent to live with a rich, neurotic Jewish family in New York.