Filmmaker Valentin Thurn became internationally known with TASTE THE WASTE. The film about food waste won an award at the 2011 Berlinale, the German Environmental Aid's Environmental Media Award and 15 other prizes in Germany and abroad. TASTE THE WASTE attracted 130,000 viewers to the cinema in Germany and another 30,000 in Austria and was broadcast on television in over 30 countries worldwide. In 2013, he made the follow-up film DIE ESSENSRETTER, which also won numerous international awards, including the Econsense Journalism Prize.
His feature film 10 MILLIARDEN - WIE WERDEN WIR ALLE SATT? also won a number of awards, including the German Nature Film Award and the FFA Branchentiger for the highest-attended cinema documentary in 2015. The book accompanying the film, HARTE KOST, was awarded the Salus Media Prize 2015.
In his current feature film TRÄUM WEITER! SEHNSUCHT NACH VERÄNDERUNG, Valentin Thurn follows five extraordinary life plans of people who are looking for alternatives for themselves and for society.
For broadcasters such as ARD, WDR, ZDF, NDR, ARTE, BR, ORB, HR, ZDF, Deutsche Welle TV and many others, he has produced numerous documentaries from his own pen, but also from other directors, including DIRTY BUSINESS WITH OUR RENT, GENERATION FOREST OCCUPANTS and CONCERTS AS SAVERS. Over the past 20 years, Valentin Thurn has made more than 50 TV documentaries and reports on social, development, environmental and educational issues, including many award-winning ones such as ICH BIN AL KAIDA (German Television Award 2006), MIT MEINER TOCHTER NICHT! (Best Documentary Film Festival Eberswalde 2007) and TOD IM KRANKENHAUS (ARGUS Medicine Award 2008).
Valentin Thurn is the author of radio features, editor of non-fiction books and lecturer at seminars on film and journalism around the world. His book DIE ESSENSVERNICHTER, published in 2011, became a Spiegel bestseller with a circulation of 35,000. He is a jury member of the competition "Too good for the ton" of the Federal Minister of Food and at various film festivals such as CinemAmbiente and Festival Vert de Meaux.
From 1993 to 2001, Valentin Thurn founded and led the International Federation of Environmental Journalists, which represents journalists from over 50 countries. From 2012 to 2016 he was the founding chairman of "Foodsharing e.V.", and from 2016 to 2022 he was the founding chairman of the first German Food Council in Cologne. He has been a member of the German Film Academy since 2019.
He studied geography, ethnology and politics in Aix-en-Provence, Frankfurt and Cologne and was awarded a doctorate at the Deutschen Journalistenschule trained as an editor in Munich. He was awarded the Journalism Prize of the German Society for Geography for his life's work.
2022 he was appointed Vorstandsmitglied der AG DOK .
