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.
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 .