Axel Ranisch was born in Berlin in 1983. In 2002, he made his first short on an impulse after a theatre workshop he wanted to attend was already full. Immediately fascinated by the medium, he eventually enrolled at the HFF Potsdam Babelsberg, where Rosa von Praunheim and Andreas Kleinert were among his teachers. Over the next years, Ranisch completed about eighty shorts, and also occasionally moonlighted as an actor in feature films like "Résiste - Aufstand der Praktikanten" ("Resist! – Rebellion of the Interns", 2009) and "Ruhm" ("Glory – A Tale of Mistaken Identities", 2011).

On his own films, Ranisch always tries to shoot scenes in a chronological order, usually without a script and relying heavily on improvisations. In 2011, he co-founded the production company "Sehr gute Filme" together with actor Heiko Pinkowski, DoP Dennis Pauls and producer Anne Baeker. The company's first project was Ranisch's graduation feature "Dicke Mädchen" ("Heavy Girls"), which went on to win the Special Prize of the Jury and the Filmmaker Choice Award at the 2012 Slamdance Festival, as well as a special award at the 2012 German Short Film Award.

Ranisch's follow-up, the tragicomedy "Ich fühl mich Disco" ("I Feel Like Disco"), was released in 2013. In addition to this, He also directed two opera productions and starred as one of the leads in the TV series "Zorn". His next film, the fairy-tale-like "Reuber", premiered at the 2013 Munich Film Festival and was released in the Spring of 2015. The same year in the fall, Ranisch put out yet another movie: The tragicomedy "Alki Alki" portrays a family man who is stuck in a downward spiral of binge drinking.

But Ranisch was also very productive on the stage, in parallel with his film work. In 2013, he directed his first opera production at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, a double bill of William Walton's "The Bear" and Francis Poulenc's "La voix humaine." In September 2014, the world premiere of the comic opera "George" by Elena Kats-Chernin, which Ranisch directed and wrote the libretto for, took place at the Hanover KunstFestSpiele Herrenhausen. In 2015, he staged Pierangelo Valtinoni's "Pinocchio" for the Bavarian State Opera. In spring 2018, Ranisch directed his first play, "Konrad oder Das Kind aus der Konservenbüchse," based on Christine Nöstlinger's work, at the Theater an der Parkaue. Around the same time, his debut novel "Nackt über Berlin" was published, winning the debut prize at lit.Cologne 2018. It was successfully adapted into a musical theater production by Bühnen Halle in the same year. Furthermore, since 2018, Ranisch has been collaborating with Devid Striesow to produce the program "Klassik drastisch" for Deutschlandfunk Kultur, which resulted in the publication of a book in 2020.  

In the realm of television, Axel Ranisch directed the award-winning film "Familie Lotzmann auf den Barrikaden" (2016) and the Tatort episodes "Babbeldasch" (2016) and "Waldlust" (2017), both featuring the Ludwigshafen investigator Lena Odenthal (Ulrike Folkerts). The critical reception of these episodes was mixed. He also worked on numerous episodes for the children's science series "Löwenzahn" between 2015 and 2020, as well as "Löwenzahn - Abenteuer in Südafrika" (2020), a TV film celebrating the 40th anniversary of the series. Additionally, Ranisch directed the short film "@Kalinka08 - Melde dich bitte" (2020) for the children's channel KiKa, which received a Grimme Award nomination and won the children's media prize Der weiße Elefant.  

Ranisch's notable stage productions include "Il segreto di Susanna" at the Bavarian State Opera (2021), Engelbert Humperdinck's "Hänsel und Gretel" at the Stuttgart State Opera (2022), and Giacomo Puccini's "Il trittico" at the Hamburg State Opera (2023).

In 2023, Ranisch's first feature film in eight years, titled "Orphea in Love," a modern operatic adaptation of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth, was released.