Asli Özarslan was born in Berlin on July 19 1986. From 2007 until 2011, she studied drama in Bayreuth as well as philosophy and sociology at the Sorbonne in Paris. She went on to work in several capacities in TV production and attended film workshops in Turkey and Israel.

In 2012, Özarslan began to study documentary filmmaking at the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg in Ludwigsburg. Her student film "Insel 36" (2012-2014), which portrays a protest camp of asylum seekers at the Oranienplatz in Berlin, screened at several international festival and earned Örzarslan a fellowship by the federal German ministry for education and science. In 2015, she also received a stipend from the Akademie der Künste.

Özarslan's feature-length documentary "Dil Leyla" premiered at the Amsterdam Documentary Festival in November 2016. The film portrays a young woman, who was raised in Germany, and eventually becomes the mayor of the Kurdish town of Cizre at the age of 26.