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Gordian Maugg was born in Heidelberg on May 23, 1966. After graduating from high school he worked as a trainee at a TV production company. In 1987, he started studying visual communications with a focus on film and television at the Kunsthochschule Kassel under Manfred Vosz. When he graduated with honors in 1993 he enrolled for two more years at HFF "Konrad Wolf" where he studied film dramaturgy in the class of Peter Rabenalt. At the time, Maugg, who had already started working on films in 1986, founded his own production company.
His debut feature then already proved to be his first success: "Der Olympische Sommer", a drama set in Nazi Germany in which the director edited original footage and new material, won him a German Film Award, as well as the William Dieterle Filmpreis. It was also successful abroad and was praised at the Tokyo IFF and the European First Film Festival in Angers.
His next film "Die kaukasische Nacht" ("The Caucasian Night", 1996) was more light hearted and told the turbulent tale of a German businessman (Winfried Glatzeder) trying his luck in the wild East right after the collapse of the USSR. The experimental portrait "Hans Warns – Mein 20. Jahrhundert" ("Hans Warns – My 20th Century", 2000) that followed next won a German Film Award for its editing.
In his feature "Zutaten für Träume" (2001), starring Renate Krößner and Ulrich Anschütz, Maugg took a look at both East German history and cuisine. In "Zeppelin!" (2006), that had already won him and co-author Alexander Häusser the Baden-Württembergischer Drehbuchpreis (Award for Best Screenplay) in 2002, he told the story of three generations all interconnected through airship building. It comes to no surprise that this film garnered him a second William Dieterle Filmpreis as this award specifically honors filmmakers who tackle issues of a changing culture and society.
Over the next years, Maugg mainly worked for TV, creating a Heinrich Heine biopic ("Denk ich an Deutschland in der Nacht", 2006) as well as the docudrama "Hungerwinter – Überleben nach dem Krieg" in 2009. The same year, "Wir Schmidts" aired, an extensive interview of former German chancellor Helmut and first lady Loki Schmidt conducted by journalist Giovanni di Lorenzo and directed by Maugg. In recent years, the director also contributed many fictional scenes to docudramas on German history.
Although as director, producer and screenwriter Gordian Maugg has always been busy, he dedicated himself to teaching film as well. From 2005 to 2009 he was a visiting professor for multi-media storytelling at the Bauhaus Universität Weimar. He has been a guest lecturer at Hamburg Media School since 2005 and at the Hochschule Ostwestfalen-Lippe since 2010.
Together with Alexander Häusser, he has also been working on various radio plays since the late 2000s. In 2009, his non-fiction book "Hungerwinter" on the post war years in Germany was published.
His current project, a feature on legendary director Fritz Lang's work on his first sound film "M", opened in German movie theaters in April 2016.