Johannes and Juha have been writing stories together since the early nineties, when they met as kids over a roleplaying table and started arguing about what should happen next.
The argument never quite ended. The roles never quite changed either. Johan has always been the storyteller. Johannes has always been the historian, the one with the imagination wide enough to hold the whole map.
MAHTANTU began in the fall of 2022, over a long thread of conversations that neither of them could quite stop having.
Johannes runs research, development, and visual production. The way the show looks, and the way it refuses to separate vision from memory, is his territory.
Johan writes. He shapes the structure of the series, the rhythm of the episodes, and the voice of every character on the page. The pilot is on its seventh revision. Season one exists in first draft, eight episodes, each one moving across at least two periods in Wehwan’s life. The non-linear architecture of the show, the way it folds time the way memory does, is his.
The partnership is fifty-fifty. Everything else they negotiate the way they always have. Across a table, with no hurry.