Kerstin Polte was born in Wiesbaden in 1975. From 1996 until 1998, she studied drama, film and literature in Québec, and then majored in media art and film at the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Karlsruhe (1999 - 2005). This was followed by her enrollment at the Zürcher Hochschule der Künste (ZHdK), where she studied film direction from 2006 until 2008.

Already as a student, Polte completed several shorts that screened at festivals, and contributed to the episodic feature "GG 19" (2007). Her graduation film "510 Meter über dem Meer" (CH 2008) won festival awards in Georgia and Uruguay, and also garnered her the newcomer award at her school. Over the course of the following years, Polte directed several shorts and commercials, and she also created video and film segments for stage productions in Jena, Frankfurt and Munich.

Together with Dagmar Jäger, who worked as DoP on some of her shorts, Kerstin Polte directed the feature-length documentary "Kein Zickenfox" (2014) which portrays the world's biggest all-female brass orchestra. The film won the audience awards at the 2014 Hamburg Queer Film Festival and the 2014 Zurich International Film Festival, and it was released theatrically in Germany in 2016.

For her second feature film, the family and relationship drama "Wer hat eigentlich die Liebe erfunden?" ("Cloud Whispers", DE/CH 2018), Polte received the Bavarian Film Award for Best New Director in 2019. She then created "Immer der Nase nach" (2021) for television, a tragicomedy exploring the everyday challenges of a window dresser navigating a midlife crisis. Following the Saarbrücken Tatort episode "Die Kälte der Erde" (2022), which delved into a case within the hooligan scene, Kerstin Polte began work on her third feature film, "Blindgänger" (“Highly Explosive”). This ensemble piece, centered on defusing a World War II bomb and its effects on a Hamburg neighborhood’s residents, premiered at the Hamburg Film Festival in 2024 and was released in cinemas in May 2025. 

Kerstin Polte, who holds both German and Swiss citizenship, lives and works in Berlin and Zurich.