Gallery
All Pictures (4)Biography
Maximilian Erlenwein was born on August 22, 1975 in Berlin (West). After studying media science and sociology in Marburg, he returned to Berlin, where he taught himself camera work, and first worked as an assistant and later as a cameraman for television features. In 1999 he began studying directing at the Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie Berlin (dffb). During this time, Erlenwein made several award-winning short films. One of his works, the 30-minute film "Blackout" (2004), about the return of a musician with latent violent tendencies (Fabian Hinrichs), won him the German Film Critics Award, the Best German Short Film Award from Interfilm Berlin and the Helene Schwarz Award for outstanding film productions at the dffb. In 2005, Erlenwein co-founded Fat Lady Filmproduktion with Robin von Hardenberg.
Erlenwein made his feature film debut with his dffb graduation film "Schwerkraft" ("Gravity", 2009), which portrays a bank employee (Fabian Hinrichs) who, after a traumatic experience, is drawn into a spiral of crime and violence by a criminal friend (Jürgen Vogel). The film won several awards at the Max Ophüls Film Festival, including the Max Ophüls Prize (main award) and the SR/ZDF Screenplay Award. It was also awarded Best Feature Film at the First Steps Awards.
After various commercials and promotional films, Erlenwein directed his second feature film, the mystery thriller "Stereo" (2014), starring Jürgen Vogel and Moritz Bleibtreu (with Fabian Hinrichs in a small supporting role). The film premiered in the Panorama section of the 2014 Berlinale. In the following years, Erlenwein directed several commercials through Fat Lady Filmproduktion, most notably for the travel company Trivago. In September 2019, the streaming series "Skylines", co-directed by Erlenwein and Soleen Yusef, was released, depicting the connections between a fictional Frankfurt record label and organized crime. Despite winning several awards, including a special Grimme prize, a second season was not produced.
In 2023, Maximilian Erlenwein returned to filmmaking with "The Dive" (DE/MT 2023), a thriller about two sisters who find themselves in a life-threatening situation while diving. The film premiered at the Munich Film Festival in the summer of 2023 and was released in theaters in December of the same year.