Ineke Smits graduated in 1984 as a photographer and video artist from the Rotterdam Art Academy. From 1989 she studied film directing and script writing at the National Film and Television School in England. She completed her Master in 1994, and subsequently collaborated with writer Arthur Japin on a few shorts she directed for Dutch broadcasters VPRO and NTR. In 2001 their first, award winning, feature, Magonia, premiered at Toronto International Film Festival. In 2002/03 she received a Nipkow Fellowship to work in Berlin, and in 2004 she developed the first draft of a feature script, The House of my Fathers, at the Binger Filmlab in Amsterdam. With this project she also participated in EAVE. Her second feature The Aviatrix of Kazbek closed in 2010 the International Film Festival Rotterdam. Between 1998 en 2008 Ineke wrote and directed four successful documentaries, amongst them Putin’s Mama, that were presented at the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam and other international festivals. With new media designer Paul Swagerman, photographer Daria Scagliola, radio maker Jeroen Stout and producer Simone van den Broek, she co-initiated Vertical Citizens, a trans-media documentary project. As a producer she was co-founder and head of development of Volya Films between 2004 and 2009. In 2011 she followed the Story Editing workshop by Franz Rodenkirchen and founded with Jeroen Stout their company Stout&Smits.