Boris Gerrets is filmmaker, film-editor, script advisor and university film mentor. Born into a Bulgarian-German family in Amsterdam, he grew-up in the Netherlands, Spain, Sierra Leone and Germany.

Gerrets’ is the recipient of the 2013 Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds, a grant awarded to him for being at the 'cutting-edge of artistic and narrative cinema' and for 'his pursuit of new forms and frontiers within the documentary genre'. He was the 2014 Laureate of the Aster Award, a prize he received in Macedonia for ‘high achievements in European and world film art’. His film, People I Could Have Been and Maybe Am (2010) received world-wide praise from film festival juries, critics and audience alike, winning twelve international awards in a wide-range of categories – among them: IDFA Best Mid-Length Doc Award (Amsterdam, 2010), Visions Du Réel, Best Direction Mid-Length Doc (Nyon, 2011), Festival Dei Popoli, Best Ethno-Anthropological Film (Florence, 2011), Festival International du Cinéma des Peuples, Audience Award (Pwêêdi Wiimîâ, 2011) and Beldocs, International Federation of Film Critics Award (Fipresco, Belgrade, 2011). His film, Shado’man (2014) was awarded the 2014 AVANCA Television Prize and got nominated for best feature-length film at the Taiwan International Documentary Festival. It had its African premiere at FESPACO, the biannual Pan-African Film Festival in Ouagadougou (2015).

Gerrets has conducted Master Classes in Film in Europe, Latin America and Asia namely at Asterfest, Strumica, Macedonia (2014), Escuela Internacional de Cine y Televisión Cuba, EICTV (2013), Educational Broadcasting System (EBS) Seoul, Korea (2011), Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica Mexico City, CCC (2011) and the University of Grenoble (2019). He was an advisor for the Filmmaker Kombat workshop of the 19th International Meeting of Cinema, TV, Video and Multimedia, Portugal; he was an external examiner and mentor for the master’s degree program in Film at the Netherlands Film and Television Academy, Amsterdam (2014); and a tutor for the IDFA- Mediafonds Workshop (2015 & 2014). He was part of the jury at the Vision Du Réel, Nyon (2012) and International Film Festival Amsterdam, IDFA (2011). A member of the Dutch Society of Cinema Editors, Gerrets (NCE) has edited over thirty documentaries, feature films and/or shorts. He has participated in conferences such as ReVision: Editing Across Disciplines at the University of Edinburgh, UK (2013) and International Conference of Media Education at Seoul National University Chungbuk (2011), as well as panel discussions namely, Day of the Doc / Creatieve Sessie: Docu/Edit at the Flanders Doc and Docville Film Festival (2012). His writings on film include, amongst others, ‘Not Yet, No More’ (2012), published in Issue 3 of &Label, University of Dundee and 'Layers of visuality: storytelling in the era of instant cinema' (2011) in Asia-Pacific Collaborative Education Journal Vol.7 No.1.

Gerrets’ schooling in cinema came by way of his many curiosities in the arts. He began studying architecture and civil engineering at RWTH Aachen University, Germany (1968-71) when a professor encouraged him to pursue painting instead. He studied art history at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn and industrial design at Kunst-Werkschule Köln (1971- 72), before obtaining a Meisterschüler (Masters in Fine Arts) at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf (1977). After completing his degree in painting and sculpture, he was awarded by the Kunstakademie the Ernst-Poensgen Travel Grant to the USA. In 1978, when he moved to Paris he became interested in theatre through performance art, attending courses in acting at Atelier International de Théâtre. In 1983, he moved to Amsterdam where alongside his art practice, he was involved in collaborative physical-theatre projects until 1990.

Throughout the 80s and 90s, Gerrets developed a versatile body of work in drawing, painting, video, animation, performance art, installation and book art. He was interested in the dramaturgy of montage, exploring the relationship between performativity and perception. Sparked by several journeys to post-war Lebanon and Iraq in the mid- 1990s, Gerrets investigated political and cultural dynamics of conflict zones and their relation to perception. Gerrets has toured and shown his theatrical and visual art work in exhibitions at the Cooper Gallery, Dundee, UK (2012), Camden Arts Centre, London, UK (2008); Kiasma Museum of Modern Art, Helsinki, Finland (2002), Centre d'Art Contemporain, Caen, France (1995); Videopositive, Tate Gallery, Liverpool, UK (1995), Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon, Portugal (1989), documenta 8 Kassel, Germany (as member of Cloud Chamber, 1987) and Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands (1986). His teaching and advisory commissions in the visual arts and theatre, include: DasArts (Amsterdam School/Advanced Research in Theatre and Dance), Rijksakademie, Amsterdam and AKI-ArtEZ (Academy for Visual Arts Enschede, University Twente). Gerrets’ work is present in public collections: Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and the Finnish National Gallery.