Valentin Thurn was born in Stuttgart in 1963. He studied geography, ethnology and politics in Aix-en-Provence, Frankfurt and Cologne. Moreover, he completed a vocational education as editor at the German School of Journalism in Munich. Since 1990, he worked as author and feature director for radio and television, and in 1994, he founded the production company "Thurnfilm". Over the years, he completed numerous TV documentaries for networks and TV stations in Germany and Switzerland. Among his award-winning films are "Papa liebt einen Mann", "Der Arzt und die verstrahlten Kinder", while "Ich bin Al Kaida" was nominated for the 2006 German Television Award. Thurn also produced radio features and published articles in various newspapers and magazines. He was editor of several books on environmental issues and has lectured on this topic around the world. Valentin Thurn teaches at the Fachhochschule in Cologne and was co-founder and – until 2001 – chairman of the International Federation of Environmental Journalists.

"Taste the Waste", his first cinema release, depicts the global misuse of foods and natural resources. The film premiered at the 2010 Berlin IFF and was released in theatres in September 2011. It caught a lot of attention and went on to win several awards.

During the following years, Thurn directed numerous investigative TV features dealing with ecological and economical topics. At the same time, he started work on his next feature-length documentary "10 Milliarden - Wie werden wir alle satt?" ("10 Billion - What Will We Eat Tomorrow?"), which explores different models of sustaining Earth's growing population and was released in the spring of 2015.