Born in 1965 in Copenhagen, Anders Østergaard trained at Central Television, London, in 1988 and graduated from the Danish School of Journalism in Aarhus, Denmark, in 1991. Østergaard has worked as a copywriter and strategic adviser at Jersild & Co., an advertising agency specializing in social and political campaigns, and as a freelance researcher and assistant director for the documentary units of DR TV and TV 2/DANMARK. His first documentary, Johannesburg Revisited, based on the feature film A World of Strangers (1962) by Henning Carlsen, was produced in 1996 for TV2/DANMARK, NRK, Nordic Film & TV Fund and the Danish Film Institute.
In 1999 he was writer and director of The Magus, a portrait of Swedish pianist Jan Johansson. Produced for SVT, DR, NRK and the Danish and Swedish Film Institutes, The Magus was awarded Best Documentary at the Odense Film Festival in 1999. Other credits include A Burning Issue, about pesticides in Africa, the documentary series Brothers in Spirit, and Malaria! Østergaard's new feature documentary, Gasolin, which opened March 10, 2006 in Denmark, is currently the country's most successful theatrically released documentary and one of the top Danish releases of the year. It tells the story of the famous Danish rock band Gasolin.