Mehmet Kurtuluş
Mehmet Kurtuluş is a Turkish-German actor. He is best known for his work with German director Fatih Akin.Life and career
Kurtuluş was born in Uşak, Turkey, and moved at the age of 18 months to Germany, where he grew up with his brother, Tekin, in Salzgitter, Lower Saxony.
He performed several minor television roles in episodes of different TV shows and continued working in theater until his big-screen debut in his main role as the young Turkish boy Gabriel in Fatih Akın's film Kurz und schmerzlos. After his breakthrough he appeared in the successful TV mini-series Der Tunnel, of Roland Suso Richter, where he performed alongside Heino Ferch and Nicolette Krebitz. Doris Dörrie chose him for her sex comedy Naked. He went back to working in television with the love film Eine Liebe in Saigon with Luxembourgian actress Désirée Nosbusch.
Kurtuluş played the main detective role in six episodes of the cult German television series Tatort. He announced afterwards that he would be working on international projects. In 2014, he co-starred with Samuel L. Jackson and Ray Stevenson in the Finnish-British action thriller Big Game.Filmography
Television
- 1993 – Adelheid und ihre Mörder
- 1995 – SK-Babies
- 1995 – Sterne des Südens
- 1996 – Doppelter Einsatz
- 2004 – Love in Saigon
- 2007–12 – Tatort
- 2016 –
- 2018 – The Protector
- 2020 – Into the Night
Cinema
- 1996 – Getürkt
- 1998 – Short Sharp Shock
- 2000 – Im Juli
- 2001 – Herz
- 2001 - Der Tunnel
- 2002 – Naked
- 2003 - Abdülhamit Düşerken
- 2004 – Soundless
- 2004 – Head-On
- 2010 – Vasha
- 2010 – Transfer
- 2014 – Big Game
- 2014 – Head Full of Honey
Awards
- Locarno International Film Festival 1998: Best Actor for Short Sharp Shock
- Grimme-Preis 2001: Short Sharp Shock
- Grimme-Preis 2009: Tatort – Auf der Sonnenseite
