梅拉妮·施皮塔，Melanie Spitta was born in Hasselt, Belgium in 1946. Nearly her entire family was murdered in the Romani Holocaust. A civil rights activist, she fought for women’s rights among the Sinti and all of society, and worked as a consultant and publicist. She was the first German Sinteza to direct films. In 1999, Melanie Spitta received the first Otto Pankok Prize, endowed by Günter Grass’s foundation, for her work “because she combatted the lack of memory.” She died in 2005 in Frankfurt am Main.