Josef Rusnak was born in Tadzhikistan on November 25 1958, and was raised in Pforzheim, Germany. He studied film at the HFF Munich, and was awarded the German Film Award for Best Direction for his debut "Kaltes Fieber". After working in French television, he moved to Los Angeles in 1992 and founded the production company Jump Cut Images. In the following years, he directed the tragicomedy "Quiet Days in Hollywood" (US, 1995), the thriller "No Strings Attached" (US, 1997) and – in Germany –, a feature-length episode of the TV series "Schimanski".

In 1999, he helmed the German-American co-production "The Thirteenth Floor", a science fiction thriller starring Armin Mueller-Stahl, Craig Bierko and Gretchen Mol. The film was produced by Roland Emmerich, on whose "Godzilla" Rusnak had before worked as second unit director. "The Thirteenth Floor" established Rusnak as a genre director, and he went on to shoot action films like "The Contractor" (2007) and "The Art of War II: Betrayal" (2008).

Following the horror films "It"s Alive" (2008) and "Perfect Life" (2010), he directed the intimate drama "Valerie", in which Franka Potente plays a woman recording a video diary for her comatose boyfriend. The film premiered at the 2010 Hamburg Film Festival and was released in September 2011. Rusnak, a founding member of the German Film Academy, resides in Berlin and Los Angeles.