Robert Thalheim, born July 2, 1974 in Berlin, graduated from high school in Indiana, USA, in 1992, and finished school in Germany in 1995. From 1997 to 1998, Thalheim worked as an assistant director at Berliner Ensemble. From 1998 on, he studied at FU Berlin but enrolled at Filmhochschule "Konrad Wolf" in Potsdam-Babelsberg in 2000 to study directing. Furthermore, Thalheim wrote a book about Andrzej Wajda (published in 2000) and is the editor of the cultural affairs magazine "Plotki". In 2003, Thalheim directed his play "Wild Boys" at Berlin's Maxim Gorki theatre.

In 2005, Thalheim made his feature film debut as a director with "Netto", a film about a father-son relationship that was shown at various festivals and won several awards, including the "Förderpreis Langfilm" at the 2005 film festival "Max Ophuels Preis" in Saarbrucken. Thalheim's second film "Am Ende kommen Touristen" ("And Along Come Tourists") premiered at the 2007 Cannes film festival. The film was nominated as Best Picture at the 2008 German Film Awards, while lead actor Alexander Fehling won the Förderpreis Deutscher Film for his performance.

Subsequently, Thalheim and Kolja Mensing co-wrote the play "Moschee DE" – a scenic re-enactment of the 2006 construction of the Khadija mosque in Berlin – which premiered at the Schauspiel Hannover in 2010. Robert Thalheim's third feature film "Westwind", about East-German twin sisters who have to decide whether they want to flee to the West at the end of the 1980s, was released in August 2011. The same year, he was one of the co-directors of "Rosakinder", a cinematic homage to filmmaker Rosa von Praunheim on the occasion of his 70th birthday.

In 2012, Thalheim started work on his next feature film: "Eltern", which was released in autumn 2013, is the humorous story of a family man, who after years of homemaking wants to pick up his career, much to the dismay of his wife and children. He next helmed the acclaimed "Polizeiruf 110" episode "Käfer und Prinzessin" (2014), starring Maria Simon and Horst Krause as Brandenburg police detectives.

Thalheim served as producer on Marie Wilke's documentary "Staatsdiener" ("Civil Servants", 2012-2015), which portrays young police cadets during their first year of training, and on Sung-Hyung Cho's documentary "Verliebt, Verlobt, Verloren" (2015), which focuses on the fate of East German women who were married to North Korean students in the early 1960s. Adapting one of his own plays, Thalheim produced and co-wrote "Moschee DE" (directed by Mina Salehpour and Michał Honnens), a film essay chronicling the conflict surrounding the construction of a mosque in the Berlin district of Pankow between 2006 and 2008.

Thalheim returned to feature filmmaking with the 2017 release "Kundschafter des Friedens" ("Old Agent Men"), a comedy about a group of former East-German secret service operatives who return from retirement for a hazardous mission. He then directed the Freiburg "Tatort" episode "Goldbach" (2017), about the death of a child; the episode was praised above all for its unusually calm narrative style. As a producer Thalheim was involved in Marie Wilke's "Aggregat" ("Agregate", 2018).

In June 2019, Thalheim's children's film "TKKG" opened in cinemas, telling the story how the popular children's detective gang began. He was also responsible as producer and co-author of the screenplay.