Sinan Akkuş


Sinan Akkuş is a Turkish-German director, writer and actor.

Life and work

Sinan Akkuş was born in Turkey. As a child he moved to Germany in 1973. After graduating from high school in Kassel, he studied philosophy, German language and literature from 1992 to 1994. In 1994 he also began studying visual communication with a focus on film and television.
In addition, Akkuş worked for the film and television production company kigali-films, where he was involved in camera work, editing and conception of corporate videos. In 1995 he attended the Escuela Internacional de Cine y Televisión as an exchange student in Cuba. In 2000 he graduated from the Kunsthochschule Kassel with a focus on film and television.
Afterwards, Akkuş made a few short films, which received several awards and honours. His short film Lassie, for example, received the rating especially worthwhile from the German Deutsche Film- und Medienbewertung. His feature film debut Evet, ich will! also received this rating. In this Culture clash - comedy, Akkuş takes on the subject of marriage among and by ethnic Turks in Germany and the associated difficulties. The film received the audience award Lüdia at the Kinofest Lünen in November 2008 and was released in German cinemas on 1 October 2009.
In 2015, Akkuş feature film 3 Türken und ein Baby, to which he also wrote the screenplay and in which the German rapper Eko Fresh and the actors Kostja Ullmann and Kida Khodr Ramadan play the leading roles, was released in German cinemas. 3 Türken und ein Baby received the rating worthwhile from the Deutsche Film- und Medienbewertung and was nominated for the Civis Media Prize in 2015. One of the last director's works by Akkuş, the television film Fischer sucht Frau was nominated for the TV Producer Award at the Hamburg Film Festival in 2018.
Akkuş also appears as an actor. Among others, he played in the first season of the ProSieben - TV series Stromberg the character Sinan Turçulu, a colleague and one of the strongest competitors of the series main character Bernd Stromberg. Turculu also appears in the feature film Stromberg - Der Film of the series. In the TV series Dr. Psycho – Die Bösen, die Bullen, meine Frau und ich Akkuş had a guest appearance in the episode Der Türke, where he played a police informer.
Furthermore, Akkuş was also active as a juror for film festivals such as the Bamberger Kurzfilmtage or the Independent Days International Filmfest and works as a lecturer at the acting school IAF - Internationale Akademie für Filmschauspiel in Cologne.

Filmography (Selection)

Director / Screenwriter