Maximilian Mundt

Biography

Maximilian Mundt was born in 1996 in Hamburg to a German mother and a Hungarian father. In 2012, he began taking acting classes at the New Talent Schauspielschule. At the same time, he pursued photography with notable success: his ironic and poetic series "Mein Deutschland," in which he photographed himself, among other roles, as Angela Merkel and the Brothers Grimm, earned him the Deutscher Jugendfotopreis (Youth Photography Award) in 2015 (age category 16–20).

Mundt's first television appearances came in single episodes of the series "Notruf Hafenkante" (2012) and "Die Pfefferkörner" (2014). On stage, he performed at Hamburg's Thalia Theater in productions of "Nathan der Weise" (2014–2016) and "Tschick" (2016). His first major cinema role followed when director Matthias Kutschmann cast him in a leading part in the coming-of-age period film "Radio Heimat" (2016), adapted from the novel by Frank Goosen. The film portrays a group of pubescent friends in the Ruhr region of the 1980s, dreaming of first love and chasing their first sexual experiences. He then appeared in a supporting role in Ute Wieland's adaptation of "Tigermilch" ("Tigermilk," released in 2017), about two fourteen-year-old friends, one of whom faces deportation.

After appearances in a number of short films, Mundt took on his breakthrough role in 2019 as the lead in the German Netflix series "How to Sell Drugs Online (Fast)." He plays a seventeen-year-old who, in an attempt to win back his ex-girlfriend, starts selling drugs online and rises to become one of Germany's most successful digital dealers. For this performance, Mundt received the Romy Academy Award in 2020 for Best Young Actor.

In February 2021, Maximilian Mundt was among the 185 lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, non-binary, and trans* signatories of the #actout manifesto, becoming part of a mass coming-out featured on the front page of the magazine of the Süddeutsche Zeitung. Initiated by Karin Hanczewski, Godehard Giese, and Eva Meckbach, the initiative took a stand against discrimination and called for greater visibility and diversity in theatre, film, and television.

In the following years, he appeared as a mentally unstable young man in a subplot of the psychological thriller "Neben der Spur – Die andere Frau" (2022) and as part of the main cast of the comedic spy series "Ze Network" (2022). In 2023, he took on a recurring role in the crime series "Conti" as the youngest member of a star attorney's (Désirée Nosbusch) team. He also continued to play the lead role in "How to Sell Drugs Online (Fast)" until the series was canceled in 2025.

That same year, David Wnendt cast him in the lead role of the science fiction thriller "Athos 2643," which is scheduled for release in 2027.