Moussa Sullaiman

Moussa Sullaiman comes from Qamişlo in northern Syria, more commonly known as Rojava (Western Kurdistan). He studied social sciences in Damascus as well as played in theatre. In 1994, after the Iraq war he left Syria to make his way to Europe. Once finally arriving in Germany, he kept himself afloat with an assortment of jobs, including as a partner in a restaurant, a trade fair stand builder, even as a door-to-door salesman for, as he puts it” …all kinds of junk”. “Travelling a lot, everywhere and nowhere,” he says, helped shaped him and acquaint him with this new foreign country, which he now calls home. Later, he went on to work for the Kurdish broadcaster Roj-TV, which was discontinued in Germany in 2008.

In his mid-forties, while teaching Arabic dialects and culture seminars, he decided his German was strong enough to restart his acting career. Sending around homemade videos, he was offered roles in small projects. In 2015, he was cast in the popular German criminal series, Tatort. Shortly thereafter, he landed a role in a new TV concept, the celebrated German series “4 Blocks”. Moussa embodied the crucial role of clan chief “Halim Karami”, the evil don, in this mafia saga about an immigrant Lebanese family in Berlin. He is hailed as being among those actors who brought a more diverse picture of immigrant life to German TV screens. Sullaiman admits what excited him about this role was it’s brutal honesty, “You can use characters you play, to explore, try out, and get to know many feelings that have no place in everyday life.”

Moussa is an avid reader, he enjoys writing, deepening his knowledge of the many languages he speaks, and travelling.