Mouataz Alshaltouh / 26

Mouataz Alshaltouh was born in Raqqa, the son of a wholesale merchant and an agriculturalist. At the age of nine, he entered his first poetry competition and continued to cultivate this talent throughout his childhood and adolescence. At age 17, he fled war-torn Syria across the Mediterranean, embarking on a life-changing odyssey that eventually brought him to Hamburg. After living in several childrens’ homes, he attended a regular school in Germany for the first time. There, a teacher recognized his unique talent and encouraged him to pursue a career in acting. He took his first steps on stage at the youth club of the Ernst Deutsch Theater in Hamburg. From his earliest performances, Mouataz Alshaltouh sensed this was the means for his own artistic expression. He applied to Germany’s state drama schools and was accepted at the renowned Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts in Berlin. His mentors during his training, Nora Leschkowitz and Susanne Wätzel, recognized and nurtured his unique sensitivity and intuition in depicting human motivation. The challenging life experiences he faced at a young age laid the foundation for his sense of humorous empathy. This remarkable emotional intelligence, combined with his uniquely nuanced, finely textured acting approach, has earned him acclaim from audiences and critics alike. The theater portal Nachtkritik wrote: ‘Mouataz Alshaltouh is a standout. He responds to his adverse circumstances with subtle humor and melancholic wisdom.’

For Mouataz Alshaltouh, art is an artificial space where we can experience ourselves outside of social conventions. In this protected environment, art makes it possible to explore thoughts, emotions and actions that audiences would not allow themselves or dare to do in real life. He approaches his role as a representative of the audience with great responsibility, using performance to challenge boundaries and open up new perspectives. In this sense, art becomes both a source of personal freedom and a means of creating freedom for others. Since the beginning of his career, Mouataz Alshaltouh has been drawn to the unusual and the subtle within his characters. His work is guided by a desire to embrace both the positive and darker dimensions of human behavior in their full complexity, creating layered portrayals that reflect the contradictions of human existence. Through his highly differentiated approach, he crafts characters that are profoundly human while revealing the tensions and ambiguities at the heart of human nature. From the outset of his career, he has collaborated with directors who challenge conventional artistic boundaries and continue to shape contemporary theater, including Julia Wissert, Pınar Karabulut, and Rafael Sanchez. Mouataz Alshaltouh’s sophisticated performances and his sensitive presence make him not only a standout theater actor but also one of the outstanding film actors of his generation. His complex, nuanced and versatile acting skills are highly valued by directors such as Laura Lackmann, Mahdi Fleifel, Philipp Kadelbach, Robert Schwentke, and Simon Verhoeven, who continue to use him for their artistically demanding productions.

Mouataz Alshaltouh works as an actor in the German-speaking world and lives in Zurich.