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Christian Schwochow, born in 1978 in Bergen on the isle of Rügen (GDR), first worked as an author, reporter and video journalist for German television, before he studied at the renowned Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg. His graduation film was "Novemberkind" ("November Child") in 2007, starring Anna Maria Mühe. It was a big success in cinemas and won several awards. In 2011 his second feature film "Die Unsichtbare" ("Cracks in the Shell") followed. For both movies he wrote the screenplay together with his mother Heide Schwochow. In 2012 he directed the adaptation of the best-selling novel "Der Turm" ("The Tower") for German TV, which made him one of Germany's leading directors.
His following project was "Westen" ("West", 2013), about a mother and her son from the GDR trying to start a new life in West Germany. "Westen" also won several awards. His made-for-TV feature film "Bornholmer Straße" (2014), for which he also co-wrote the screenplay with his mother Heide, garnered rave reviews and a Grimme Award. Told from the perspective of an East-German border patrol officer, the tragicomedy chronicles the last hours before the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9 1989.
Schwochow went on to direct the "Tatort" episode "Borowski und der Himmel über Kiel" (2014), part one "Die Täter" of the three-part multiperspective drama about the right wing terrorists of the NSU "Mitten in Deutschland: NSU" (2016) and the two-part TV feature film "Die Pfeiler der Mach" ("A Dangerous Fortune"), which is based on the eponymous novel by Ken Follet. In late 2015, he started production on "Paula", a biopic on expressionist painter Paula Modersohn-Becker, played by Carla Juri. The film won the Bavarian Film Prize 2017 for Best Cinematography (Frank Lamm) and the German Film Prize in the categories Best Production Design and Best Costume Design.
The series "Bad Banks", directed by Schwochow, about the corrupt abysses of modern investment banking also received much critical praise and a whole series of awards. Among others, Schwochow won the Bavarian Television Prize and the German Television Prize, both for Best Director; the series itself was also awarded the German Television Prize and received seven awards from the German Television Academy.
At Filmfest Hamburg in autumn 2019, "Deutschstunde" ("The German Lesson"), a film adaptation of the classic novel of the same name by Siegfried Lenz, celebrated its premiere. The film deals with the Nazi era and how post-war Germany comes to terms with its most recent past. The script was written by Schwochow's mother Heide Schwochow, with whom he already worked on several earlier films.