Sebastian Winkels was born in 1968 in Kleve. He gained practical film experience through internships with camera rental companies in Munich, Prague and Amsterdam, where he worked as a material and camera assistant on international feature film productions. In 1996 he began studying camera at the Konrad Wolf Academy of Film and Television in Potsdam-Babelsberg. His student short feature film "Hase und Igel" (2000) won the audience award at the Dresden Film Festival and received the Murnau Short Film Award as well as the German Short Film Award in silver. His short films "Oberstube" (2000), "Innen Außen Mongolei" (2002) and "Falling Grace" (2004) also received awards at festivals. Winkels' graduation film, the long documentary "7 Brüder" (2003), about seven brothers born between 1929 and 1945 in Mühlheim an der Ruhr, was awarded the Haus des Dokumentarfilms' prize, the Robert Geisendörfer Prize and the documentary film prize at the Kinofest Lünen. 

Since then Winkels has been active as a documentary filmmaker. His works include the TV documentary "Der Kräutergarten von Java" (2007) and the award-winning documentary "Nicht alles schlucken - Ein Film über Krisen und Psychopharmaka" ("Don't Swallow Everything", 2015). He also works as a dramaturg, cameraman and editor on productions by other filmmakers, such as Simon Brückner's "Aus dem Abseits" ("From the Sideline", 2015) and Valesca Peters' "Helmut Berger, meine Mutter und Ich" (2018). His own documentary "Talking Money", about credit negotiations in banks world-wide, premiered in 2017 at the Festival Visions du Réel in Nyon (Switzerland). The German theatrical release took place in March 2019.  

In addition to filmmaking, Sebastian Winkels has been teaching at film schools and universities, giving workshops and developing training programmes for creative documentary film.