---
name: "Helena Zengel"
canonical: "https://film.one/person/helena-zengel"
fi1m_id: "helena-zengel"
imdb_id: "nm8023748"
tmdb_id: 1756490
wikidata_id: "Q61654078"
roles: ["Actor"]
born: "10 June 2008"
reviewed_on_fi1m: 1
average_as: "actor"
average_over: 1
updated: "2026-09-24T22:46:01.717730+00:00"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Helena Zengel

## Identity

Helena Zengel

- **Canonical:** https://film.one/person/helena-zengel
- **Type:** Person
- **Fi1m ID:** helena-zengel
- **IMDb ID:** nm8023748
- **TMDB ID:** 1756490
- **Wikidata ID:** Q61654078
- **Same entity:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helena_Zengel, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q61654078, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm8023748/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/1756490

Actor. Born 10 June 2008 in Berlin, Germany.

## Details

- **Work:** Actor
- **Born:** 10 June 2008, Berlin, Germany
- **Golden Globes:** 1 Golden Globe nomination
- **Elsewhere:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helena_Zengel, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q61654078, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm8023748/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/1756490

## Streaming the US now

- **Peacock:** [*News of the World*](https://film.one/film/news-of-the-world.md) (65)

For United States; add `?region=XX` for another country.

## Fi1m on Helena Zengel

> Helena Zengel does most of her acting without dialogue, and the less she is given to say the harder she is to look away from. The question now is what she does once she is allowed to speak.

In *News of the World* (2020) Helena Zengel goes almost the whole film without a word of English. Her Johanna, born German and raised Kiowa, eats with her hands, bolts at the sound of a wagon wheel, sings to the dead and looks at Tom Hanks the way a cat looks at a stranger's hand. Then the two of them begin trading words for things, bird and horse and bread, and Paul Greengrass's slow, handsome Western settles into a rhythm it never quite loses. She is the reason to watch it.

She began at five, in a music video for a Berlin band, and put in the usual small parts in German television before Mascha Schilinski gave her a lead in *Die Tochter* (2017). The part that made her name was Benni in Nora Fingscheidt's *System Crasher* (2019), a nine-year-old the care system keeps passing along, played at full volume. We have not reviewed it, but by all accounts it is the loud end of what she does, and Greengrass cast her soon after for the quiet end. Since then she has led *The Legend of Ochi* (2025), an American fantasy adventure opposite Willem Dafoe, and taken her first adult role, in the German series *Westend Girl* (2026).

What she does that other young actors do not is refuse to ask for our sympathy. Most children on screen are directed to be liked, and it shows in the eyes; Zengel's eyes are busy with something else, usually working out whether the adult in front of her is a threat. It makes her hard to read and impossible to ignore. We sat through a hundred minutes of *News of the World* dry-eyed and slightly restless, and then the last ten, which we will not describe, caught us out completely. The credit belongs to her face, and to Hanks for letting it have the scene.

The caveat is that she has so far been cast, nearly every time, as a troubled girl who says what she means with her body rather than her mouth. That is a real gift and a narrow one, and children with a gift for damage tend to be handed damage until they stop being children. *Westend Girl* is the first test of what she does as a grown woman with lines to learn. Watching *System Crasher* again recently, she said, "It doesn't feel like me." That is probably as it should be.

## Biography

Helena Zengel is a German actress. She was born on 10 June 2008 in Berlin and began acting at the age of five.

Zengel first gained attention for her leading performance as Benni in the 2019 drama *System Crasher*, for which she won the German Film Award for Best Actress, becoming the youngest recipient of the prize. She played Johanna Leonberger opposite Tom Hanks in the 2020 Western *News of the World*, directed by Paul Greengrass, and received nominations for a Golden Globe Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Supporting Actress.

*Sources: imdb.com, de.wikipedia.org, variety.com.*

## On Fi1m (1)

- *News of the World* (2020), Fi1m 65, as Johanna Leonberger — [page](https://film.one/film/news-of-the-world.md)

## Complete filmography (17)

Every credit, newest first. Titles without a page can be requested for review on the HTML page.

- *Bloody Tennis* (2026), as Heidi
- *Transamazonia* (2025), as Rebecca Byrne
- *The Legend of Ochi* (2025), as Yuri
- *Sebastian Fitzek's Therapy* (2023), series, as Josy Larenz
- *INTIMATE.* (2023), series, as Nyla
- *A Christmas Number One* (2021), as Nina Cutter
- *News of the World* (2020), as Johanna Leonberger — Fi1m 65, [page](https://film.one/film/news-of-the-world.md)
- *Baby Bitchka* (2020), as spielendes Mädchen
- *System Crasher* (2019), as Benni
- *Der gute Bulle* (2017), as Fabienne
- *Sommermärchen* (2017), as Lilly Weyer
- *Dark Blue Girl* (2017), as Luca
- *Route B96* (2016), as Karlotta
- *Looping* (2016), as Lilly
- *Never Too Late for Justice* (2016), series, as Anja Rothmann (jung), Lilly Weyer
- *Inga Lindström* (2004), series, as Milla
- *Exploding Ducks*, Actor

## Gallery

- ![Actress Helena Zengel at the Berlin Film Festival 2020 (2019)](https://film.one/media/person/3846292/gallery-31bff558558a.jpg) Actress Helena Zengel at the Berlin Film Festival 2020 (2019) — Harald Krichel, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a8/Helena_Zengel-1038_%28cropped%29.jpg/1280px-Helena_Zengel-1038_%28cropped%29.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail)
- ![Actress Helena Zengel with teh silver bear for "Systemsprenger" on the red carpet of the Berlinale closing gala 2019.](https://film.one/media/person/3846292/gallery-dbfa8e0718eb.jpg) Actress Helena Zengel with teh silver bear for "Systemsprenger" on the red carpet of the Berlinale closing gala 2019. — Martin Kraft, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5e/MJK_39322_Silberner_B%C3%A4r_f%C3%BCr_Systemsprenger.jpg/1280px-MJK_39322_Silberner_B%C3%A4r_f%C3%BCr_Systemsprenger.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail)
- ![Helena Zengel presenting the movie System Crasher at the Berlinale 2019](https://film.one/media/person/3846292/gallery-bdcc5acfef4c.jpg) Helena Zengel presenting the movie System Crasher at the Berlinale 2019 — Martin Kraft, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9a/MJK_331520_Helena_Zengel_%28Systemsprenger%2C_Berlinale_2019%29.jpg/1280px-MJK_331520_Helena_Zengel_%28Systemsprenger%2C_Berlinale_2019%29.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail)
- ![Actress Helena Zengel at the Berlin Film Festival 2020 (2019)](https://film.one/media/person/3846292/gallery-7d1cc7c9c546.jpg) Actress Helena Zengel at the Berlin Film Festival 2020 (2019) — Harald Krichel, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c6/Helena_Zengel-1046.jpg/1280px-Helena_Zengel-1046.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail)
- ![Helena Zengel](https://film.one/media/person/3846292/gallery-e68935ab9973.jpg) Helena Zengel — Image via TMDB
- ![Helena Zengel](https://film.one/media/person/3846292/gallery-b48ecc65e5a3.jpg) Helena Zengel — Image via TMDB
- ![Helena Zengel](https://film.one/media/person/3846292/gallery-23d5c0863093.jpg) Helena Zengel — Image via TMDB
- ![Actress Helena Zengel at the Berlin Film Festival 2020 (2019)](https://film.one/media/person/3846292/gallery-1c7461e22126.jpg) Actress Helena Zengel at the Berlin Film Festival 2020 (2019) — Harald Krichel, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/27/Helena_Zengel-1198.jpg/1280px-Helena_Zengel-1198.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail)
- ![Actress Helena Zengel at the Berlinale 2019](https://film.one/media/person/3846292/gallery-904bced1e25a.jpg) Actress Helena Zengel at the Berlinale 2019 — Harald Krichel, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9a/Helena_Zengel-1174.jpg/1280px-Helena_Zengel-1174.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail)
- ![Helena Zengel](https://film.one/media/person/3846292/gallery-0c33fdbfba9c.jpg) Helena Zengel — Image via TMDB
- ![Helena Zengel](https://film.one/media/person/3846292/gallery-c75db01f0b39.jpg) Helena Zengel — Image via TMDB
- ![Helena Zengel](https://film.one/media/person/3846292/gallery-881caae3ba3c.jpg) Helena Zengel — Image via TMDB

## Awards

### Golden Globes — 0 won, 1 nominated

- 2021: Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture (nominated), for *News of the World*

### Other awards — 1 won, 1 nominated

- German Film Award 2020: German Film Award (won), for *System Crasher*
- European Film Award for Best Actress 2019: European Film Award for Best Actress (nominated), for *System Crasher*

*From Wikidata, which records wins more completely than nominations.*

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/helena-zengel