Sabrina Mertens was born in 1985 in Hamburg. Mertens studied audiovisual media design in Berlin, worked for Deutsche Welle TV (DW-TV) as a freelancer and began with independent filmmaking in 2011. She studied documentary directing at Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg in Ludwigsburg (Germany) until 2025. 

She participated in artist residencies in Germany and Austria and was a member of the jury at the International Film Festival Mannheim Heidelberg in 2020, at ARC Film Festival in Mainz (Germany) in 2023 and at the FINAL GIRLS BERLIN FILM FESTIVAL in 2024. Mertens received a screenplay development grant from the Baden-Württemberg film fund (MFG) in 2021 for ZUMUTUNGEN (IMPOSITIONS). 

Sabrina Mertens’ works deal with painful border areas of social norms and taboos, supposed self-evident facts in capitalistic society, their consequences and (utopian?) deviations. Mertens draws artistic inspiration from observations, pop cultural phenomena, literature, socio-political and philosophical ideas. She is interested in creating alternative ideas of reality and in making inner processes visible and tangible through the cinematic medium, often combining contrasts such as slapstick with social tragedy and absurd/farcical situations with psychological or sociological questionings and positions. As an auteur director, Mertens writes her screen plays, directs and also takes on the production, casting, set and costume design, post-production and sometimes camera work for many of her projects.

Sabrina Mertens’ films have been shown at national and international film festivals, exhibitions and curated programs. Her feature debut FELLWECHSELZEIT (TIME OF MOULTING), a social horror drama, premiered 2020 at the Film Festival Max Ophüls Preis, Saarbrücken and the Rotterdam International Film Festival, won the Restless Revolutions Best Film Award at the Seville European Film Festival, awarded by the FIPRESCI jury, and is released in North America since mid-2023 on streaming services like shudder, Apple TV and Amazon Prime Video and on Blu-ray.

PHILLIPIKA – STRANGERS NEED LOVE TOO is her diploma feature film.