Brenninkmeijer was born and raised at Doorwerth castle, Netherlands, where his father was owner of the Michelin starred Restaurant.

At the age of 8 his family moved to Apeldoorn. From 1988 to 1992 he studied at the Netherlands Film Academy in Amsterdam. Although aiming to direct feature films, he first focused on storytelling through editing.

In 1992, he started his professional career editing television series and films. As an editor he worked with Dutch directors like Academy Award winner Mike van Diem, Willem van de Sande Bakhuijzen en Maarten Treurniet.

He directed his first feature film in 2000, The Silence of the Soul, which won a "Golden Crown" Award at the ICVM festival in Atlanta, United States.
The same year he co-directed the TV series Westenwind which won the Televizierring.
In 2002 he wrote, produced and directed the motion picture Swingers, a controversial low-budget production that had theatrical releases in the Benelux countries and was sold internationally.
In 2011 he wrote, produced and directed the feature film Caged. Caged was picked up by Anderson Digital for US home theatre release in February 2013.
In 2012 Brenninkmeijer participated in the crowd-sourced project Entertainment Experience with Paul Verhoeven to make his version on the user-generated script. Both Verhoeven's film (called Tricked) and Brenninkmeijers Lotgenoten (Counterparts) were to be released in the Netherlands in March 2013. The Entertainment Experience won an International Emmy Award 2013.