Darth Maul: Apprentice

Cinematic fan film set in the Star Wars universe, directed by Shawn Bu. Originally made as a bachelor thesis at FH Aachen, the seventeen-minute short grew far beyond its original frame — visually ambitious, uncompromisingly staged and executed with a seriousness more reminiscent of a cinema production than of classical fan content.

The film’s visual language was shaped to a large extent by Max Tsui as lead director of photography. Together with Vadim Schulz and Vi-Dan Tran, a visual vocabulary emerged that consciously drew on big-screen genre cinema: hard contrasts, monumental landscapes, controlled movement and an almost mythological light.

The shoot spanned thirteen months across eighteen days of production, with a crew of around seventy people. Locations included the Teufelsschlucht canyon in the Eifel and the heath landscapes of the Brunssummerheide in the Netherlands. Despite a comparatively small low-five-figure budget, the result was a film whose production value drew international attention.

At its centre stands Darth Maul — not as a mere antagonist, but as an almost tragic figure between rage, isolation and inner conflict. The film largely refuses irony and approaches the Star Wars universe with an unusually dark, atmospheric visual register.

Released on YouTube on 5 March 2016, Darth Maul: Apprentice reached over five million views within its first week. To this day the film is internationally regarded as one of the most recognised and visually influential Star Wars fan films ever made.

The project also drew attention well beyond the classical fan-film scene: even comic legend Stan Lee publicly mentioned the film and praised its creative execution — an extraordinary moment for an independent German production.

In 2016 the film won the German Webvideopreis in the "Video of the Year" category; in 2017 it was nominated for the Goldene Kamera Digital Award.