Oskar Bökelmann was born in 1997. At the age of eleven, he was discovered by director Andreas Arnstedt, who cast him as the lead in "Die Entbehrlichen" ("The Dipensables", 2009). His harrowing performance as a young boy from a broken home won him the newcomer award at the 2010 Max Ophüls Preis and the actor award at the Los Angeles Film Festival.

Bökelmann went on to play supporting roles in the TV movie "Friedrich - Ein deutscher König" (2012) and the feature release "Die Vermissten" ("Reported Missing", 2012). He had a memorable turn as a victim of sexual abuse in the award-winning drama "Verfehlung" ("The Culpable", 2015) and also appeared in the TV productions "Der verlorene Bruder" (2015), "Die siebte Stunde" (2016), and the "Tatort" episode Fünf Minuten Himmel" (2016).

He played a young German POW in the WW II drama "Unter dem Sand - Das Versprechen der Freiheit" ("Land of Mine", DK/DE 2015), which was released in April 2016.

Among his other roles on the big screen was the crush of the teenage main character in the eighties provincial comedy "Petting statt Pershing" ("Good Girl Gone Bad", 2018) and the sidekick of a rapist in the psychodrama "Das schönste Paar" ("The Most Beautiful Couple", 2018). On television, Bökelmann played a juvenile with a criminal record in the two-part "Usedom" crime thriller "Nebelwand" and "Trugspur" (2017). He had other TV roles in family comedies such as "Familie mit Hindernissen" (2016) and "Ihr seid natürlich eingeladen" (2018), as well as in episodes of "Beck is back!" (2019) and "Die Heiland - Wir sind Anwalt" (2021). In January 2022, he appeared in two "Polizeiruf 110" episodes directed by Eoin Moore.

Already filmed in 2018 and premiered in 2020, "Arboretum" was released in cinemas in February 2023. The film, which is a combination of coming-of-age drama and mystery thriller. Is about about two teenage outsiders, one of whom (Bökelmann) increasingly loses himself in violent revenge fantasies.