Hark Bohm was born May 18, 1939, in Hamburg-Othmarschen and grew up on the North Sea island of Amrum. His younger brother Marquard worked as an actor and, thus, Hark Bohm came in contact with the film and theatre business while he still studied law in Hamburg, Berlin, and in Lausanne. After graduating from university, Bohm started a legal clerkship but dropped out in 1969 to pursue a career in the film business, too.

From the early 1970s on, Bohm appeared in numerous films by the directors of "New German Cinema": He, for instance, starred in Rudolf Thome's film "Rote Sonne" ("Red Sun", 1970) and in Alexander Kluge's "Der große Verhau" ("The Big Mess", 1971). Still, he mainly collborated with Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Until Fassbinder's death in 1982 they worked together for twelve films.

After directing several short films and setting up "Filmverlag der Autoren" with other filmmakers in 1971, Bohm made his feature film debut in 1973: "Tschetan, der Indianerjunge" ("Chetan, Indian Boy"), a combination of a classic western film and a teen film, was consistently well received and also won the "German Film Critics Award".

During his career as a director, Bohm again and again realized children's and teen films that dealt with the living conditions of young people in a partly humorous but most often rather serious, socio-critical way, for instance, "Ich kann auch 'ne Arche bauen" (1973; TV), starring Uwe Bohm whom he later adopted as a son (at the time he was still called Uwe Enkelmann) in the leading role, "Wir pfeifen auf den Gurkenkönig" (1974; TV) based on Christine Nöstlinger's bestseller, "Nordsee ist Mordsee" ("North Sea Is Dead Sea", 1976), again starring Uwe Enkelmann in a leading role, or "Moritz, lieber Moritz" ("Moritz, Dear Moritz", 1978) about a 15-year old who is constantly fronted with the dark sides of the adult world.

In 1979, Bohm became one of the founding members of Filmbüro Hamburg. In the same year, he also initiated the Hamburg film festival. With "Der Fall Bachmeier" (1984), Bohm tried to come to terms with one of the most startling criminal cases of the 1980s when a mother killed the murderer of her child in the courtroom. Whereas leading actress Marie Colbin won the German film award for her performance, the film itself received mixed reactions by critics and movie goers alike.

Four years later, Bohm celebrated his biggest success yet with "Yasemin" (1988): The film about a German student who falls in love with a young Turkish woman and is confronted with the hostile attitude of her (actually rather liberal) family became a huge success with critics and audiences, won numerous awards (including the German film award as "Best film"), and was also used in schools as the basis for discussions about migration and cultural differences.

Despite his success with "Yasemin", Bohm directed less and less films in the following years. Between the GDR drama "Herzlich Willkommen" (1990) and the thriller "Für immer und immer" ("For Ever and Ever", 1997), Bohm did not direct a film for seven years. Actually, Bohm was involved with other things during that time: after setting up the degree course for movie and theatre direction together with Jürgen Flimm in Hamburg in 1985, Bohm also founded the film degree course at Hamburg University (since 2004 a part of Hamburg Media School) and has served as its head ever since.

After the highly-praised TV drama "Vera Brühne" ("The Trials of Vera B.", 2001) about a criminal case from the 1960s that is still unsolved to date, Bohm finished his most recent film in 2002, the semi-documentary Udo Lindenberg vehicle "Atlantic Affairs".

Besides his work as a director, Hark Bohm has always been a rather busy actor: During the last decades, he has appeared in about 90 movie and TV productions. Even after his last own film, he participated in cinema and television productions by other directors, mostly in smaller roles. For example, in the prison comedy "Underdogs" (2007), in Ina Weisse's family story "Der Architekt" ("The Architect", 2008), Andres Veiel's "Wer wenn nicht wir" ("If Not Us, Who", 2011) and Dani Levy's satire "Der Liebling des Himmels" (2015). With Fatih Akin's films "Tschick" ("Goodbye Berlin", 2016) and "Aus dem Nichts" ("In the Fade", 2017), Bohm was involved as a co-author. For the screenplay of the latter film, Akin and Bohm were awarded the German Film Prize 2018 for the screenplay. Hark Bohm received the Honorary Lola at the same ceremony for his outstanding services to German film.

As an actor, Bohm was seen in Akin's serial killer psychogram "Der goldene Handschuh" ("The Golden Glove", 2019) as a regular at the eponymous neighborhood dive bar. He also had supporting roles in Bernd Böhlich's family story "Und der Zukunft zugewandt" ("Sealed Lips", 2019) as the father of Robert Stadlober's main character, and in the "Tatort" episode "One Way Ticket" as a Stasi agent in hiding.

Once again working with Akin, Bohm wrote the screenplay for Akin's feature film "Amrum" (release: 2025), which is based on Bohm's childhood memories. Bohm also developed a novel of the same name from the material which he originally wanted to film himself.