Ondřej Vavrečka

Ondřej Vavrečka is a filmmaker, visual artist, musician, and teacher. Originally rooted in programming, he later turned to philosophy and linguistics before studying film at FAMU in Prague and at VGIK in Moscow.

In his filmmaking, he draws on themes and situations that directly surround him. Through documentary, fiction, performative, and essayistic approaches, he develops these impulses into broader conceptual contexts. Everyday experience becomes, in his work, a starting point for reflecting on wider questions of the contemporary world. His films have received several awards and have been presented internationally.

In his films, he treats specific situations as spaces in which meaning gradually takes shape. He is interested in themes of repetition, growth, desire, responsibility, and the transmission of experience, which he explores with attentiveness to detail and a subtle sense of irony.

As a visual artist, he works with collage, sewing, painting, and material-based objects, including images, sculptures, and costumes. A strong engagement with materiality and physical experience plays an important role in his practice. He understands tactility as a pathway to direct experience, which is also reflected in his use of analogue 16mm film. He often works with recycled materials, placing them into new contexts. His visual work has been exhibited in both solo and group exhibitions.

He composes and performs music, frequently creating soundtracks for his own films, and has published numerous theoretical and “filmosophical” texts. 

He is an Associate Professor at the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (FAMU), where he is engaged in both teaching and artistic research. In his teaching, he supports an open approach to media, diversity of forms, and independent creative thinking.