Serpil Turhan was born in Berlin on November 28 1979. At the age of sixteen, she was discovered by director Thomas Arslan who cast her as the lead in his feature film debut "Geschwister - Kardeşler" (1997): Turhan played a German-Turkish girl who lives with her parents and brothers in the Kreuzberg district of Berlin.

After graduation, Turhan first studied drama at the Freie Universität Berlin. She then visited lectures at the Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie Berlin (dffb), while continuing to work as an actor. She reunited with Thomas Arslan for "Der schöne Tag" ("A Fine Day", 2001), in which she played a young Berlin woman who drifts aimlessly through the city summer after breaking up with her boyfriend. Filmmaker Rudolf Thome cast Turhan in leading roles in "Rot und Blau" ("Red and Blue", 2003), "Frau fährt, Mann schläft" ("Woman Driving, Man Sleeping", 2004) and "Rauchzeichen" ("Smoke Signs", 2006). All three films also featured Hannelore Elsner and Karl Kranzkowski in the cast. In addition to this, Turhan appeared in Neco Çeliks award-winning "Urban Guerrillas" (2004).

In 2006, Serpil Turhan enrolled at the Hochschule für Gestaltung (HfG) in Karlsruhe, where she majored in media art. Moreover, she garnered practical set experience working as assistant director for Rudolf Thome (on "Das Sichtbare und das Unsichtbare" / "The Visible and the Invisible", 2007, and "Das rote Zimmer" / "The Red Room", 2010) and Thomas Arslan (on "Im Schatten" / "In the Shadows", 2010). One of her student projects, the audio drama "Jahrgang ′76" (2008), was released on CD and aired on Deutschlandradio Kultur in 2010. The same year, her mid-length documentary "Herr Berner und die Wolokolamsker Chaussee" premiered at the Duisburger Filmwoche, where it won the fellowship award (ex aequo with "Auf Teufel komm raus").

Turhan graduated with her feature-length documentary "Dilim Dönmüyor – Meine Zunge dreht sich nicht" (2013), in which she portrays members of her family in Germany and Turkey, and shows the difficult search for identity between two cultures. The film screened at the Hamburger Dokumentarfilmwoche and at 'Visions du Réel' in Nyon, Switzerland. As an actor, Turhan appeared in a supporting role in Max Linz' "Ich will mich nicht künstlich aufregen" ("Asta Upset", 2014).

Her next feature film as director, a very personal portrait of Rudolf Thome titled "Rudolf Thome - Überall Blumen" ("Rudolf Thome – Flowers Everywhere"), premiered in the Forum section of the 2016 Berlin IFF.

After that, it took five years until Turhan's next film: For "Köy" (Turkish for "village"), she accompanied three Kurdish women from three generations living in Berlin over a period of three years. The film premiered at the Duisburg Film Week in November 2021 and was released in April 2022.