Soleen
Yusef

Soleen Yusef was born in Duhok/Iraqi Kurdistan. At the age of nine she and her family had to flee to Germany because of the political circumstances. She graduated high school in Berlin and afterwards attended the Academy of Stage Arts, where she was trained as a singer and actress. Meanwhile she also finished her training as a fashion seamster and tried out her expertise in different creative fields. Eventually she ended up working in the film industry for a few years and was a production and director assistant at Mîtosfilm.

In 2008 she then started studying feature film directing at the Baden-Wurttemberg Film Academy. Her film TRATTORIA, which she had made in her third year, premiered at the 62. Berlin International Film Festival in 2012. Because of her outstanding academic achievements, Soleen Yusef was distinguished with the Germany Scholarship in 2012. She also participated as a Baden-Wurttemberg scholarship holder in the UCLA Workshop at the Film Academy in Los Angeles in 2013. HOUSE WITHOUT ROOF, which is not only her graduating project but also her first feature film, that has been shot in spring 2015 within and around her hometown Duhok, could achieve a great success.

Since then, Soleen has been working as a director for several international series productions. Among others for NETFLIX and AMAZON PRIME. In addition to developing her own cinema and television projects as a creator, Soleen Yusef is currently writing an adaptation of Abbas Khider's novel A SLAP IN THE FACE, which will be produced by UFA FICTION.
With WINNERS she is fulfilling a long-awaited dream, developing her first children's feature film together with DCM Pictures.