Philipp Kadelbach, born September 9, 1974 in Frankfurt am Main, studied in the U.S. at the Pittsburgh Filmmakers' School of Film, Photography, and Digital Media. During that time, he worked for a year for the local television station WQED. Back in Germany, he got a job at the Frankfurt-based commercial film agency Neue Sentimental Film in 1995, as head of the Avid Digital Editing department. The following year, he began studying at the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg in Ludwigsburg. His graduation short film "Platonische Liebe" ("Platonic Love", 1999) was awarded the Murnau Short Film Prize and was shown in the Panorama section at the Berlinale 2000. After graduation, Kadelbach realized commercials, image films and music videos.   

From 2007, he worked primarily for television. He directed the first four episodes of the twelve-part crime series "Unschuldig?!" ("Innocent", 2008) and the two-part eco-thriller "Das Geheimnis der Wale" ("The Secret of the Whales", 2010) starring Veronica Ferres. The lavishly produced disaster two-parter "Hindenburg" ("Hindenburg: The Last Flight", 2011) was a big hit with audiences. The film's top-class cast included, among others, Heiner Lauterbach, Justus von Dohnányi, Christiane Paul and international stars Greta Scacchi and Stacy Keach. The reviews were favorable, and at the 2011 German Television Awards, "Hindenburg" was awarded in the category Best Multi-part Series.   

The three-parter "Unsere Mütter, unsere Väter" ("Generation War", 2013), about five friends from Berlin and their harrowing experiences during World War II between 1941 and 1945, caused quite a stir in Germany. Historian Norbert Frei, for example, wrote in Stern: "The film is a step forward if only because we have never seen the war against the Soviet Union on German television in such an unembellished way. The merit of this three-parter is its shades of gray: no one-dimensional, idealized figures, no invitation to easy identification, no melodrama, but broken characters who become aware of their complicity." On the other hand, historian Ulrich Herbert wrote in the taz: "Our fathers and our mothers were not just young people who simply wanted to live, but couldn't because of the war, as the film suggests. This was a highly ideologized, politicized generation that wanted German victory, the victory of National Socialist Germany, because they thought it was right." There was also sharp criticism of the historical presentation abroad, especially in Poland and the United States.   

None of this detracted from its success: the German Academy of Television awarded the three-part series in seven categories, including Best Director. At the German Television Awards, it won the prize for Best Multi-part Series, and at the Bavarian Television Awards, it won a special prize for the ensemble. At the 2014 International Emmy Awards in New York, "Unsere Mütter, unsere Väter" won the prize for Best Miniseries.   

After the successful historical two-parter "Die Pilgerin" (2014), Kadelbach again took on a Nazi-era subject: "Nackt unter Wölfen" ("Naked Among Wolves", 2015, TV), based on the famous novel by Bruno Apitz, told of a resistance group in the Buchenwald concentration camp of 1945 that hides a young boy from the SS. The film received ambivalent reviews, but was nominated for the Grimme Award and earned Kadelbach the Bavarian Television Award for Best Director. At the German Television Awards, "Nackt unter Wölfen" won Best TV Film, and at the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival it won two Audience Awards.

The gritty thriller "Auf kurze Distanz" ("Point Blank", 2016, TV), about an undercover investigator (Tom Schilling) who infiltrates the Berlin sports betting mafia, received very positive reviews. This film also received several awards, including the Hamburg Crime Prize. Kadelbach then directed the British miniseries "SS-GB" (2017), a crime story set in a fictional Nazi-occupied England after the Germans have won World War II. Also a British production, Kadelbach directed the first two episodes of the Neil Jordan-conceived high-society series "Riviera" (2017) in France.   

Back in Germany, Philipp Kadelbach made his first feature film, which also marked a departure from serious and historical material: the tragicomedy "So viel Zeit", based on the novel by Frank Goosen, told of the aging ex-members of a teenage rock band who dare to make a comeback after 30 years. Despite good reviews, the film was not a big box-office success.   

Kadelbach made another TV series, "Parfum" ("Perfume", 2018), loosely based on the international bestseller "The Perfume" by Patrick Süskind, but set in the present. Also based on a book, the series "Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo" ("We Children from Bahnhof Zoo") is about a group of teenagers in 1970s Berlin who slide deeper and deeper into drug addiction and prostitution. The series began streaming on Amazon Prime Video in February 2021.