Werner Boote started out as a cable boy, working his way up and gathering all the necessary ingredients to make films along the way. He studied Drama and Theater Arts, Journalism, and Sociology at the University of Vienna and at the Film Academy. After years of being an Assistant Director (to Robert Dornhelm, Ulrich Seidl, Bud Spencer, Marvin Chomsky, and others), Boote began making his own films in 1993 ; numerous award-winning music documentaries followed. In 2009, his first feature film, Plastic Planet, arrived in Austrian cinemas and went on to appear in over 80 countries. The movie inspired viewers to live a plastic-free life, achieved important social and legal changes, and won the Golden Romy for Best Feature Documentary. In the movie Population Boom (2013), Boote called for more equal distribution and did away with the widespread worldview of overpopulation. The film was crowned  Best Green Documentary in Berlin.

Following his jolting feature documentary Everything’s Under Control (2015) on the implications of surveillance, his new film The Green Lie came to cinema screens in March 2018.