Born in Saudi Arabia to Austrian parents in 1971, Paul Poet was initially an organizer, DJ and punk singer in the Viennese underground scene. It was there that he met Christoph Schlingensief, with whom he collaborated on the performance project “Bitte liebt Österreich” (Please love Austria). From the filmed material of this project, he later made his first feature film as a director: “Foreigners out! Schlingensief’s Container” (2002). Poet is, among several other projects, currently working on a filmic adaptation of “Der Minusmann” for the production company of Ulrich Seidl, the life story of Viennese criminal Heinz Sobota. His most recent cinema release, the hybrid feature “Der Soldat Monika” (2024), is a genre-breaking biographical portrait of Monika Donner, an elite transsexual soldier, a front figure for gender rights and a book author celebrated by the political far right.