
Hagen days
Hagen directors Cyrill Boss and Philipp Stennert take DQ inside this fantasy drama based on a centuries-old saga, discuss producing a film and series simultaneously, and explain why the show is more The Godfather than Game of Thrones.
For a split second, directing duo Cyrill Boss and Philipp Stennert were drawn back to their childhood memories of reading Wolfgang Hohlbein’s fantasy novel Hagen von Tronje when they were asked to collaborate on a new retelling of this story for the screen. Then the realities of actually making this ambitious medieval epic, titled Hagen, began to set in.
The story introduces Hagen (Gijs Naber), a soldier and lord commander bound by duty to his king and loyalty to his kingdom. But he has a secret – he is deeply in love with Princess Kriemhild (Lilja van der Zwaag), a love that will never be allowed.
When the Huns threaten to invade and an unexpected guest – Siegfried (Jannis Niewöhner), the legendary dragon slayer – arrives, Hagen’s world is turned upside down as King Gunter (Dominic Marcus Singer) seeks to strengthen his position by marrying Brunhild (Rosalinde Mynster), the famous Valkyrie queen with old magic powers. To secure her hand, he requires the help of both Siegfried and Hagen, leading to a dramatic and ultimately catastrophic series of events in a tale of love, power, family and war.
Boss and Stennert were in the middle of shooting the second season of their German crime drama Der Pass (Pagan Peak) when they took a call from Martin Moszkowicz at Constantin Film about tackling a new version of the centuries-old Nibelungen story, on which Hohlbein’s novel is based, for modern audiences.
“Of course, we were fired up immediately and our first reaction was kind of childlike,” Boss tells DQ. “When we were young, we loved knight movies and knight stories. I also read a lot of sagas from that time. We both liked the book from Wolfgang Hohlbein and we knew the original tale, which is pretty famous in Germany. They even teach it at school.

“That was the initial spark that ignited the whole thing. One phone call and we immediately said yes. But then we had to dig deeper and really think about it as storytellers.”
Creating their own fantasy world was something the pair had always dreamed of. “But then there’s also this realistic evaluation of, ‘Let’s be honest, what can we actually do in Germany with a budget that’s not $250m?’” Stennert says. “That process with the producers is always a long dialogue and [involves] scriptwriting, rewriting and rewriting. But in the end we tried to find a story that is not about visual effects, where the main focus is not about money – an emotional story with a core we really relate to.”
The Nibelunglied is a German-language poem that dates back to the 13th century, telling a story that has subsequently been retold across generations. In it, Siegfried comes to the town of Worms to marry Burgundian princess Kriemhild, but her brother King Gunther will only agree if Siegfried helps Gunther to marry warrior queen Brünhild. However, Siegfried and Gunther later become rivals, leading to Siegfried’s death at the hands of Hagen. Later in the poem, Kriemhild invites her new husband Etzel, king of the Huns, to take revenge on Hagen – a request that leads to the destruction of their kingdom.
Hohlbein published his own version of the tale in 1986, though the author chose to subvert the original story by putting the villainous Hagen at the centre.
“In the original, Hagen von Tronje is more like a dark counsellor in the background and Siegfried is the bright hero,” Boss explains. “Hohlbein asked himself, ‘What is Hagen’s perspective? What is he really like? Maybe he’s also in love with Kriemhild, like Siegfried, and maybe he suffered through the whole thing.’
“What fascinated us is that there are two sides of the same coin. The bright hero who is, in a way, like a rock star, driven by his emotions, turning everything upside down, and this responsible, loyal servant who tries to hold everything together. These two opposites are something we all have in us, and that is something we could really relate to and was really interesting for us as storytellers.”

“It’s a great inspiration from that perspective,” adds Stennert. “It was giving us a framework, but there were a lot of things we had to make up on our own and really go back to the source material and read about all the different versions of the saga.”
The development of Hagen was complicated by the fact that this fantasy drama would be produced as both a feature film and a six-part series. The movie was released in cinemas in Germany last week, while the series is coming soon to RTL in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Fremantle is handing distribution in other countries.
Boss and Stennert have experience working in both mediums and knew the strengths and weaknesses of each. But making a film and a series simultaneously was “a great challenge,” Stennert admits. “Mainly we decided to see the series as an ensemble piece with many different characters and the feature movie like a personal drama concentrating on one strong conflict between two main characters. That’s the short answer for how we tried to wrangle it.”
So at the centre of the film stand Hagen and Siegfried, while the series digs deeper into their family and Kriemhild’s story in particular, which they have expanded from the original story.
“We also tell the story of Queen Ute,” Boss says, “who is almost non-existent in the original saga. So you understand the whole family and the whole kingdom even more. All of them have to struggle with the same theme, [where characters are either] emotional and showing your emotions or being restricted and going by the rules.”
On set, the directors refrained as much as possible from discussing with the actors exactly which scenes were destined for the big or small screen. They themselves, however, were absolutely aware of where each particular scene would land and how it would fit into the differing structures of a movie and a series. That’s not to say the plan they had at the start was maintained through post-production, however.

“In the beginning we had a clear vision, because we had our scripts for the feature movie and for six episodes,” Stennert says. “But in the editing room, you try things out and have a scene for the series that works in the feature movie as well, or vice versa.”
With lots of actors to contend with as well as huge sets and numerous costumes, the directors partnered with costume designer Pierre-Yves Gayraud and production designer Matthias Müsse to help bring the world of the series to life in Prague, where the production was based. Some scenes were also shot outside the city’s Barrandov Studios on snowy fields or in nearby forests, while a huge area 100km away was used for the battlefields where the Burgundians fight their enemies.
As ever, preparation was key for all departments. “We had a lot of script readings and the actors were able to practice a lot,” Boss says. “They went riding for a month, and fighting, and we were able to talk to the stunt guys and develop story-driven choreography for everything.”
The shoot also featured a full-scale ship that was built at the Barrandov site by Müsse and fixed on a huge hydraulic system surrounded by green screens, water slides, several light structures and an enormous camera crane. It made for a “bizarre” way to sail across the Arctic Ocean to Iceland, while one scene called for the actors and stunt performers to work in a terrible storm.
“When you have these big-budget projects, you have to be even more disciplined about what you really want to tell with every costume, with every set and every stunt,” notes Stennert. “Do we just want to have a great medieval costume, or do we want to tell something about the character? When you put this question on top of the list of priorities, it’s pretty much the same process always, no matter how much money you have. It’s the question everybody should ask themselves.”

For a fantasy drama that also features elements of magic, the use of VFX and CGI played an important part in discussions about how far the story would lean into the genre, with characters also including “fantastic beings” such as Alberich, a “dreamlike dwarf.”
But while Stennert acknowledges that a story like Hagen might easily be compared to shows like Game of Thrones or The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, it was never their intention to follow in the footsteps of those series. “Of course, it looks like that kind of show,” he says. “But we never wanted to say, ‘OK, let’s do a German Game of Thrones.’ We couldn’t do that because of the money, and also we never wanted to.”
“It’s not a big fantasy story,” Boss says of their series – which previously featured in the DQ100. “There is this dragon and a magical dwarf in it, but that’s basically it. It’s really about a family and family structures, and the emotions and everything within a family. We always said it’s closer to The Godfather because it’s not about big kingdoms and the intrigue between them. It’s really a family story, a family drama.”
Behind the camera, the pair – who met at film school and began writing together 20 years ago – wanted to ensure every shot contributed to telling the story. Notably, to show the emotional development of Worms and its people, the camera is cold and static in the beginning before the picture becomes more colourful when Siegfried rides in.
“It becomes more visually emotional in a way,” Boss says. “That’s something we talked about a lot with the cameraman and when we prepared our shots.

“We tried to do it with every aspect, from the music to costumes and the sets,” Stennert adds. “When they go to Iceland, for example, it really opens up in every aspect. You’re almost in a dreamlike world, which feels really surrealistic at points.”
One standout scene involved a fight sequence that was recorded over three days on a real glacier in Iceland. Understandably, “we thought about it a lot,” Stennert says, with discussions over whether the same sequence might be achieved using either a green screen or virtual production.
But then he and Boss decided it would be best to shoot on location. “We always knew, because of the weather in Iceland, this was such a risky thing to do because the weather can change so quickly there,” Stennert continues. “In a matter of hours, it can change from a sunny day into a snowstorm. But it was three days of almost stable weather, which is very uncommon in Iceland. It was a big relief, as if some movie god kept his protecting hand over us.”
Should the directors decide to continue the story of Hagen, there could be numerous ways to revisit Holhbien’s novel and the Nibelungen saga, but they’re not ready to consider going back to it just yet. “The first part is the story of Siegfried and his adventure killing the dragon. There’s the middle part which is his time in Worms, and that’s our story, and the saga does continue with Kriemhild’s revenge,” Stennert says. “It would be possible to do sequels or prequels. But that’s not a plan so far. We are just focused on telling this story as well as possible.”
tagged in: Constantin Film, Cyrill Boss, Fremantle, Hagen, Philipp Stennert, RTL