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Lars Montag was born in Bünde on April 23, 1971. From 1990 until 1992, he was trained in radio and TV engineering in Nuremberg, and from 1992 until 1994, he worked as a camera assistant at the WDR network in Cologne. In 1994, he enrolled at the Kunsthochschule für Medien in Cologne.
After graduating with the award-winning eleven-minute short "Lenas Land" (1999), Montag started working for different TV networks. Between 2001 and 2003, he also worked on stage productions. As a writer and director for TV, he helmed a wide range of projects, including the teen comedy "Küssen verboten, Baggern erlaubt" (2003), the satire "Willkommen in Lüsgraf" (2006), the romantic comedy "Nur ein kleines bisschen schwanger" (2007) and several "Tatort" entries. His script (co-written by Stephan Falk) for the "Tatort" episode "Kassensturz" (2009), which he also directed, was nominated for a German Television Award and won the ver.di Medienpreis. Moreover, he directed episodes of popular TV shows like "Heiter bis tödlich" (2013), "Mord in bester Gesellschaft" (2015) and entries of "Kluftingerkrimi" (2016).
With "Einsamkeit und Sex und Mitleid" ("Sex, Pity and Loneliness", 2017), an adaptation of Helmut Krausser's novel, Lars Montag directed his first feature-length theatrical release. The film received three nominations at the 2017 German Film Awards, including one for Best Screenplay. At the Romy Awards in Austria in 2018, Montag was honored in the Best Director Feature Film category.
The Austrian TV two-parter "St. Josef am Berg" with Paula Kalenberg received less positive reviews. Originally planned as the start of a series, the production was not continued. For the streaming service Netflix, Montag directed the first three episodes of the multiple award-winning series "How to sell drugs online (fast)" (2019); together with the other members of the creative core team, he won the Grimme Award in the Children & Youth category for the series in 2020.
For television, he made "Werkstatthelden mit Herz" (2020), a working-class comedy along the lines of British social comedies, about four friends who want to save their car repair shop from ruin by participating in a marathon. Montag then began shooting his next feature film: "Träume sind wie wilde Tiger" ("Dreams Are Like Wild Tigers", 2021), a Bollywood-style children's film about an Indian boy living in Germany who dreams of becoming a Bollywood star. At Kinofest Lünen 2021, the film won the award for Best Children's and Youth Film. The German theatrical release was in February 2022.