Rick Minnich was born in 1968 in Pomona, California (USA). While studying literature at Columbia University in New York, he gained his first experience in the film business as an intern at the New York film distributor Kino International between 1988 and 1990. During this time, in 1989, he completed a semester abroad at the Institute for European Studies in Vienna and traveled extensively throughout Europe, particularly Eastern Europe. Back in New York, he graduated with a bachelor's degree in English Literature in 1990. After an internship as a camera assistant at Latvian Television in Riga, Minnich pursued graduate studies at CalArts School of Film and Video in Santa Clarita, California (1991-1992).    

With a DAAD scholarship, Minnich came to Germany, where he made his first film in 1993: the three-minute experimental documentary "Delphi 1830," which uses a rapid montage to capture a day at the 1993 Berlinale. The short fiction film "Next Time Everything Will Be Better" followed that year, about an anarchist, an intellectual and a stoner in Berlin who want to take history into their own hands. Both films screened at several festivals. Also in 1993, he began creating documentary trailers for Deutsche Welle TV in Berlin as a freelancer (until 1997).   

From 1995 to 2001 Minnich studied directing at the Hochschule für Film & Fernsehen 'Konrad Wolf' in Potsdam (today: Filmuniversität Babelsberg). During ihs studies he realized several documentary films. His feature-length "Good Guys & Bad Guys" (1996), about right-wing patriots in a Los Angeles suburb, was awarded the Director's Prize of the HFF 'Konrad Wolf' for an 'exceptional artistic Achievement' and received an Honorable Mention at the Leipzig DOK Festival. Minnich's graduation film "Heaven On Earth" (2001), a portrait of the small town of Branson, Missouri, which has become a Christian conservative entertainment metropolis, won, among others, the Babelsberg Media Award for Best Graduation Film, the Audience Award at the Williamsburg Brooklyn Film Festival, New York, and the Fipa d'Or in Biarritz. Furthermore, it was nominated for the German Camera Award.   

Over the next few years, Minnich worked as the director of the inset films on the TV talk show "So gesehen" (2003) and began work on his first documentary feature: at the Hot Docs festival in Toronto in April 2005, he presented "Homemade Hillbilly Jam," a portrait of musician Mark Bilyeu, who founded the very popular band "Big Smith" together with his cousins in the Ozarks in southwest Missouri, a region that belongs to the so-called Bible Belt of the USA.   

Minnich's very personal documentary "Forgetting Dad" (2008, co-directed with Matt Sweetwood), about his father's mysterious amnesia, gained much attention. The film received very positive reviews and was awarded the Special Jury Prize at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA).  

In 2013 Rick Minnich started working as a lecturer in documentary film at MET Film School Berlin. In 2015 and 2016 he was a lecturer in documentary film at Sabah Film Academy, Malaysia. During these years he realized the medium-length film "Die Bombenjäger" ("The Bomb Hunters", 2015), for which he accompanied bomb hunters in Oranienburg near Berlin, who are still tracking down and defusing numerous Allied aerial bombs from World War II.   

As part of the Documentary Filmmaker in Residence initiative, he taught as a visiting professor at Robert Morris University in Pittsburgh in 2017. In 2019, he founded the production company Our Man in Berlin (formerly Rickfilms). The following year, he began work on the documentary "The Strait Guys," about an engineer on a self-imposed mission to connect Alaska and Russia via an intercontinental railroad that would also tunnel 100 kilometers under the Behring Sea. The film opened in German theaters in June 2022.   

In addition to his film work, Rick Minnich continues to teach at international film workshops.