Martin Lehwald

"It all goes back to us both answering a call of nature at the same time during the German Film Awards in 2005 when Dani Levy’s 'Alles auf Zucker!' took home six Lolas," recalls Marcos Kantis.

That brief encounter resulted in Martin Lehwald, co-founder of the Berlin-based production outfit Schiwago Film, asking him whether he would consider joining the company. "We already knew each other through a mutual friend, the line and executive producer Axel Bär, and another connection was the fact that Marcos had been working at X Filme which had distributed our production of 'Muxmäuschenstill' in 2004," Martin recalls.

During his time at X Filme Marcos had served as line producer on productions as diverse as "Good Bye, Lenin!", "Agnes und seine Brüder" and "Was nützt die Liebe in Gedanken". "I had a wonderful chance there to work with really interesting directors on some great projects," Marcos says. "But somehow, I had come to a point where I was looking for new challenges and so took the decision to accept Martin’s offer to come onboard Schiwago Film.

"Marcos was a superb complement to me [and Schiwago’s other co-founder Michal Pokorny] because he had built up considerable experience and expertise at X Filme working on larger scale films and international co-productions," Martin adds. Since then, the company has been behind such successful productions made for the cin­ema as Jan-Ole Gerster’s two features "Oh Boy" ("A Coffee in Berlin", 2012) and "Lara", Wolfgang Fischer’s "Styx", and Vasilis Katsoupis’ Willem Dafoe-starring thriller "Inside" as well as series and TV movies for German television.

While Marcos and Martin never had any formal training to prepare themselves for their ultimate careers in film production, cinema nevertheless played a role in their teenage years growing up in their hometowns in North Rhine-Westphalia. "I was a member of the local film club where they showed all the classics from 'Rocky Horror Picture Show' to 'The Blues Brothers'. One of the first films to really stay in my memory was David Lynch’s 'Blue Velvet' and its opening sequence with the severed ear," Marcos recalls. "And after taking my Abitur, that wave of anti-war films with 'Platoon' and 'Full Metal Jacket' led me to be a conscientious objector and not want to do military service."

"My family never went to the cinema, and I can only remember going once with my father and that was to see 'A Bridge Too Far'," Martin says, "but then we had weekly screenings in a cinema in my home town of Mönchengladbach where you could see films by directors like Kieslowski and Kaurismäki."

Both of them also found opportunities during their university studies to get more insight into the actual nuts and bolts of how films and TV movies are produced: Martin worked in various positions such as set manager, gaffer and editing assistant on various productions, while Marcos, for example, ran the whole gamut of possibilities from set runner to production manager for Action Concept on the TV series "Alarm für Cobra 11".

Looking back now at almost two decades of working together, they both point out that they have stayed true to their credo of addressing relevant issues in their projects without neglecting the entertainment value. Moreover, they set great store on supporting the next generation of filmmakers, and their current slate sees them serving as producers of debut features by such new talents as Alison Kuhn ("Die Matriarchin"), Alina Yklymova ("Matröschki"), Josia Brezing ("Glitzer im Gesicht") and Frédérique Veith ("Ruki's First Summer"), while their production of Stella Marie Markert’s graduation film "Danke für Nichts" ("Thanks For Nothing", 2025) which won the Big Audience Award at this year’s First Steps Award, will have its inter­national premiere in Tallinn Black Nights’s Just Film Competition for youth feature films.

At the same time, their choice of which projects to produce knows no borders: for instance, Martin was in India this spring for the shoot of Udita Bhargava’s "Kohinoor", and Marcos will be setting off to Namibia next year for the company’s second collaboration with "Styx" director Wolfgang Fischer on the thriller "Südwest".

Author: Martin Blaney