Gallery
All Pictures (2)Biography
Gedion Odour Wekesa was born in Kenya and grew up with his family in Kibera, a slum in Nairobi. Wekesa received acting lessons in the Drama Department at One Fine Day e.V., a support association founded by Marie Steinmann-Tykwer und her husband Tom Tykwer to give slum children access to spaces of art. There he also took part in a casting for Wolfgang Fischer's refugee drama "Styx" (DE/AT 2018) and was cast in a leading role. The film received excellent reviews and was awarded many prizes.
Gedion Oduor Wekesa's second role in a feature film was in Carolina Hellsgård's coming-of-age story "Sunburned" (DE/NL/PL 2019), about a 13-year-old German girl who befriends a Senegalese beach vendor (Wekesa) during a holiday in Spain and wants to help him to find the money he needs to be able to go and visit his father. After its premiere at the Max Ophüls Preis film festival in January 2020, the film was released in German cinemas in July 2020.