Jannis Lenz is a filmmaker whose work is rooted in physical experience, shaped by parkour and freerunning.

Early films such as SCHWERELOS focus on bodies in urban environments—testing physical limits, confronting architecture, and redefining space.

These questions of control and vulnerability continue in works such as SHADOWBOXER, BATTLEFIELD and SOLDAT AHMET,

expanding into a broader inquiry: masculinity as an open, fragile, and often contradictory construct.

Working across fiction, documentary and installation, his films move between observation and staging.

This practice developed during his time at the Vienna Film Academy, where he learned from Jessica Hausner

and worked as an assistant to Michael Haneke.

With his first feature film OASE, Lenz extends the formal and thematic concerns of his work into a longer narrative structure,

continuing to explore embodied experience, space, and identity.

SELECTED ACCOLADES, GRANTS AND MORE

2023   Talent Film Program / Kuratorium Junger Deutscher Film (DE)

2022   C.E. Guggenheim Emerging Artist Award (US)

2022   Award of the Austrian Film Institute for Best Upcoming Director (AT)

2021   First Steps Award / Nomination,  Berlin (DE)

2021   Berlinale Talents Alumni (DE)

2017   European Film Award / Nomination, Berlin (DE)

2017  Prix Clermont-Ferrand (FR)

2017   Award of the Society of Fine Artists Austria - Künstlerhaus Wien (AT)

2017   Membership of the European Film Academy 
2017   Performance Grant - University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna (AT)
2016   START Scholarship for Cinematic Art of the Austrian Ministry of Culture  (AT)

2016   Bachelor Degree with Distinction in Directing at Filmacademy Vienna  (AT)

2016   FIPA Talent Campus Alumni  (FR)

2016   Guest Student for Acting & Theatre Directing - Max Reinhardt Seminar (AT)