American Sweatshop is a 2025 mystery thriller directed by Uta Briesewitz in her feature directorial debut and written by Matthew Nemeth. The film follows Daisy Moriarty, a social media content moderator, whose ordinary job turns dangerous when she witnesses a violent crime in an online video. Lili Reinhart leads the cast as Daisy, alongside Daniela Melchior, Joel Fry, Christiane Paul, Tim Plester, Faith Delaney, Jeremy Ang Jones, and Max Croes. Produced by Barry Levinson and Tom Fontana, the movie dives into the dark side of online content moderation.
Where Was American Sweatshop Filmed?
In the summer of 2024, filming for American Sweatshop took place in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. The production was mostly based in Cologne and Bonn. With €400,000 from the Film and Media Foundation NRW, the film was able to use some of the most flexible studios and urban locations in the region.
Cologne – MMC Studios
The main place where the films were made was MMC Studios, which is at Butzweiler Straße 255 in the Cologne neighbourhood Ossendorf. This big studio complex is one of the best places to make films in Germany, and it’s known for hosting both foreign and domestic projects. The crew of American Sweatshop was able to recreate office scenes and high-stakes scenes from Daisy’s job as a social media content reviewer at MMC Studios, which has a controlled environment.
Cologne was a great place for the production to start because it had good infrastructure, professional crews, and a lot of different places to shoot.
Bonn – Plittersdorf and Beyond
Bonn was used for outdoor scenes and neighbourhood shots, especially in HICOG-Siedlung Plittersdorf, a residential area with a unique mid-century style of architecture. This location was perfect for scenes showing Daisy’s normal life outside of work. It gave the thriller a realistic, European city feel.
In recent years, Bonn has become more and more of a centre for film and TV productions. The city’s event coordination department kept track of about 60 productions in 2024 alone. These included films, TV shows—and news reports. American Sweatshop used Bonn’s streets and riverside scenery—as did other well-known projects like Silent Friend and episodes of Tatort.
Setting shots often include the banks of the Rhine and the city’s historic buildings, which add to the moody and tense feel of the movie. Bonn is becoming more and more popular with international filmmakers because it is easy to work with production teams and has a lot of different movie theatres.
Behind the Scenes of the Production
Director Uta Briesewitz, known for her work on The Wire, Westworld, and The Wheel of Time, brought her experience in blending tension with striking visuals to her debut feature.In Cologne, interiors were mostly controlled, but the locations in Bonn made the story seem more real and authentic. Lili Reinhart said in interviews that the project was both timely and scary, pointing out that the production team did a great job of showing how dangerous the digital world can be in real-life European settings.
Official Trailer
For more updates on filming locations, TV series — and movie productions, visit netfilming.com, your source for behind-the-scenes filming news.
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