Tonio Hecker is a German director and screenwriter born in Nicaragua. He studied Film Directing at the German Film and Television Academy in Berlin (DFFB), with academic residencies in Argentina and Spain. In 2017, he directed his first short film, Abrahams Unschärfe, which screened at the Lubuskie Film Summer, the Bridge of Arts Motivational Film Festival, and the Visionär Filmfestival Berlin. He made the short film Azzam for the ARTE-SWR series Die dunkle Seite des Mondes, featuring Syrian refugees, which premiered on ARTE in 2019. In 2021, he presented the documentary Insurgente —about a FARC-EP front in Colombia during its final year of existence— which premiered at the Buenos Aires International Documentary Film Festival (FIDBA) and was screened at other international festivals. His most recent work, El caso Freytter, was screened at the International Film Festival for Human Rights–Colombia, the DOK Leipzig Film Market, and Zinexit Bilbao–Human Rights Film Festival, and is currently being broadcast on Señal Colombia, EITB, and RTVC Play. In his work, Tonio addresses political issues and processes of transition and identity.

El sabor del jocote — Konrad (24) receives a phone call that compels him to travel from Berlin to South America to identify a body that could be his mother’s, a German woman who years earlier joined the Colombian guerrilla. Upon discovering that it is not her, he decides to leave his former life behind and set out on a journey in search of his mother.