Vita Caroli

My name is Karel Koula. I am a film, television and theatre director and screenwriter. My work focuses above all on fiction film and documentary storytelling. I am drawn to personal stories, powerful images and working with music.

I have worked with leading figures of Czech culture — Karel Šíp, Jiřina Bohdalová, Oldřich Navrátil, Igor Bareš, Pavel Rímský, Daniela Kolářová, Marta Vančurová, Roman Zach, František Ringo Čech, Rudy Linka, Daniela Špinar and others. I have also filmed with members of minorities, foreigners, people with disabilities, homeless people and protagonists of alternative scenes.

Beyond the Czech Republic, I have filmed in England, the United States, Vietnam, Indonesia and the Central African Republic. Moving between different cultural, social and geographical contexts has fundamentally shaped the way I tell stories and work with images.

In the series The 13th Chamber and the Czech version of Who Do You Think You Are?, I explored personal stories, trauma, family memory and historical and genetic connections.

In my work I like to bring images and music together and to look at serious subjects through a tragicomic lens. For me, laughter need not be the opposite of pain — it can often reveal it more precisely. I am interested in moments where absurdity meets melancholy, nostalgia meets irony, and a personal story meets the wider picture of its time.

I am interested in people in their own surroundings — whether they stand at the centre of attention or on its margins.

I studied fiction directing at FAMU, the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, under Dušan Klein, Věra Chytilová and Juraj Jakubisko.

I worked as an assistant on the feature films Indian Summer by Saša Gedeon, Code Name Ruby by Jan Němec and Wild Bees by Bohdan Sláma.