Georg Maas

Biography

Georg Maas, born in 1960 in Aachen, Germany, completed an apprenticeship as a carpenter and then worked for several years as a carpenter and with homeless youth. In 1984 he began studying directing at the Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie Berlin (dffb). During his studies, which he completed in 1991, he directed several short films, some of which won awards, including a trilogy about work and everyday life: a mixture of experimental and narrative films about a man's journey to work, the soundscape of a construction site, and a worker's journey home.

Since graduating, Maas has worked as a freelance screenwriter and director; he has made a number of medium-length documentaries for various television channels, such as "Das andere Universum des Klaus Beyer" (1994), about a factory worker who makes poetic Super-8 films in his spare time and performs as a Beatles impersonator, and "Abgehauen" (1995), about the lives of institutionalized and street children. In 1994, Maas attended directing master classes at the European Film Academy, including those of István Szabó and Krzysztof Kieslowski. In 1997 he co-founded the Actor-Director-Writer Laboratory (S.R.A.L.) in Berlin.

In 1998, Maas directed the feature-length TV documentary "Pfadfinder", about the different but closely intertwined lives of two old friends. In 2003, he made his first feature film, "NeuFundLand" ("New Found Land"), the melancholic-romantic story of a man who tries his luck in East Germany with an unusual business idea. Starring Jochen Nickel, Anna Loos and Axel Prahl, the film won the Grand Prize for Best Screenplay at the 2003 Geneva Film Festival and was nominated for the Bernhard Wicki Award at the Emden-Aurich-Norderney Film Festival.

In the following years, Georg Maas, in collaboration with filmmaker Dieter Zeppenfeld, produced the TV documentaries "The Real World of Peter Gabriel" (2009) and "The Buddha Wallah" (2010), about an Englishman who became a monk in Thailand in the 1970s and later founded meditation centers around the world.

In 2012, the feature film "Zwei Leben" ("Two Lives") premiered at the Biberach Film Festival, which Maas co-directed with the cinematographer Judith Kaufmann. The drama, starring Liv Ullmann and Juliane Köhler, tells the story of a woman forced to confront her past as an agent of the East German secret police. "Zwei Leben" won the Grand Jury Prize in Biberach and the Audience Award at the Emden Film Festival in 2012. The film was released in German cinemas in September 2013.

For television, Maas directed the documentary portrait "Liv Ullmann - Eine Nahaufnahme" (2013). It then took him ten years to make his next movie: In the early summer of 2023, he again co-directed with Judith Kaufmann "Die Herrlichkeit des Lebens" ("The Glory of Life"), an adaptation of the novel of the same name about the late love between Franz Kafka and the actress Dora Diamant. The film was released in March 2024.