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Kai Ehlers was born in West Berlin in 1976. He trained as a carpenter (1995-96) and gained experience as an actor in the youth group of the Schauspielhaus Hamburg. From 1997 to 2003 he studied documentary film directing at the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg. During this time, he realized, among others, the 60-minute documentary "Country No. 1 - Herbst 2001 in New York" ("Country No. 1 - Fall 2001 in New York", 2002), about everyday life in New York after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The film premiered at the Max-Ophüls Preis Film Festival in 2003 and won the Best Student Film Award at the Documentary Film Festival in Kalamata (Greece).
After graduating, Ehlers began working as a freelance writer and director. He realized several documentary film projects as well as stage videos for stage performances, such as for the opera "Zaide/Adama" at the Salzburg Festival in 2006 and for the play "Regie" at the Sophiensälen in Berlin in 2014.
For television he made the documentary "Helene Fischer - Allein im Licht" (2013), which received very good reviews. Tilmann P. Gangloff, for example, wrote: "It is no exaggeration to mention this film in the same breath as the works of D.A. Pennebaker." Ehlers also directed several episodes of the documentary series "Justice - Die Justizreportage" (2015). In parallel, he studied art history and philosophy in Berlin from 2008 to 2015.
In 2017, Ehlers was one of the directors of the documentary collaborative project "Film Wanderungen" ("Film Walks") about everyday life situations around Berlin's Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz. The film was presented as 'Guest of Perspektive Deutsches Kino' at the Berlinale 2018, where the audience was invited into the living rooms around Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz to see the short individual films, meet the neighbors and maybe engage in conversation with them.
At the Hamburg Documentary Film Week 2019, Kai Ehlers presented "Freistaat Mittelpunkt" ("Free State Midpoint"), a documentary about Ernst Otto Karl Grassmé, who was considered an outsider and was interned and forcibly sterilized by Nazis in 1939. The wider theatrical release did not take place until almost two years later, in late summer 2021, due to the Corona pandemic.