Early life and education
Ade was born in Karlsruhe, West Germany. As a teenager, she directed her first short films.
In 1998, she began studying film production and media management, and later film direction at the University of Television and Film (HFF) in Munich, which she successfully completed in 2004.
Career
In 2001, Ade co-founded the film production company Komplizen Film together with Janine Jackowski, a fellow graduate from HFF. It was with Komplizen Film that she produced her final student film The Forest for the Trees at HFF in 2003. Among other honors, the film received the Special Jury Award at the Sundance Film Festival in 2005. The Forest for the Trees was screened at a large number of international festivals.
In 2009, her second film Everyone Else celebrated its world premiere in the Official Competition section of the Berlin International Film Festival, where it received the Silver Bear for Best Film (Jury Grand Prix) and the Best Actress Silver Bear for Birgit Minichmayr. Everyone Else was released in theatres in over 18 countries.
In 2012, Ade announced she would be writing and directing a film called Toni Erdmann about a man who begins to play pranks on his adult daughter after he finds she has become too serious. The film debuted In Competition at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, the first German film to debut there in 10 years. The film won the top prize at the European Film Awards (Best European Film), thus making Ade the first woman to direct a movie that won the top prize at those awards.
Ade served on the jury of the 2017 Cannes Film Festival, chaired by Pedro Almodóvar. At the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, she presided over the festival's short film competition jury, as well as the jury for the La Cinef lineup of student films.
