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Franziska Stünkel was born in Göttingen in 1973. From 1994 she studied screenwriting and film direction at the Hochschule für Bildende Kunst in Kassel, followed by film studies in Hildesheim in 1996. In 1999 she went to the FH Hannover, where she studied film in the faculty of fine arts. After graduating in 2004, Stünkel became a master student of Prof. Uwe Schrader. As a student, she made several short films, some of them award-winning. Her short film "BonBon" (1999) received the Premio Nuovo Award at the Williamsburg Brooklyn Film Festival (USA) and the Jury Prize at the Cine-Art Festival Hamburg. "Wünsch Dir Was" ("Make a Wish", 2001) won the Audience Award at the Festival Cine 2001 in Mexico; "It's a Small World and Things Like This" (2003) was awarded the main prize at the Filmfest Dresden.
Franziska Stünkel made her feature film debut with "Vineta" (2006), a film adaptation of Moritz Rinke's play "Republik Vineta". The prominent ensemble included Peter Lohmeyer, Ulrich Matthes, Justus von Dohnányi and Susanne Wolff. At the Hamburg Film Festival, "Vineta" was awarded the Otto Sprenger Prize for Best Debut Film. At the Houston International Film Festival (USA) "Vineta" won the Remi Silver Award; Stünkel also received a nomination for the German Film Award in the Screenplay category.
In 2012 Stünkel realised the 18-hour TV documentary "Der Tag der Norddeutschen", which showed the everyday life of 121 people in a single day. The film was made from over 700 hours of footage, the team consisted of 400 employees. The first broadcast took place on 10 November 2012 from 6:00 a.m. to midnight on NDR television in real time.
In addition to her work as a filmmaker, Franziska Stünkel has always been active as a photo artist. In cooperation with the Kestnergesellschaft Hannover she developed the project "Tell Me Their Story" (2010), in which artists such as Kai Wiesinger or Moritz Rinke developed a film scene based on a photograph by Franziska Stünkel and then presented it at the opening event. Visitors also had the opportunity to write their own film scenes, which then became part of the installation. Over the years, Stünkel's photographic works have been shown in various galleries, art associations and museums, such as Art Galerie 7 in Cologne, Museum Heylshof in Worms and Galerie Robert Drees in Hanover. In 2010 she received the Audi Art Award for photography, in 2014 the City of Hannover Prize and in 2015 the Berlin Hyp Prize.
In autumn 2019 Franziska Stünkel began shooting her second feature film "Nahschuss" (theatrical release: 2021), about the case of the last execution in the GDR in 1981, starring Lars Eidinger, Devid Striesow and Luise Heyer. The film premiered at the Munich Film Festival 2021, where Stünkel won the Award for Best Screenplay. The theatrical release was in August 2021.