Biography
Ravi Karmalker is a German-Indian film producer, director, writer and coach located in Cologne and Nairobi whose films and TV series have received a total of 36 nominations and awards at international film festivals. Since 2019, he has produced TV series and feature films mainly in close partnership with Netflix and ZDFarte.
After studying History of Arts, Karmalker worked in the theatre department. He directed plays and trained about 150 actors in Method Acting. He also worked as a radio- and TV reporter for Westdeutscher Rundfunk, one of Germany's national TV and radio stations, where he produced over 1000 features on cultural and social topics.
Since the early 2000s, Karmalker worked as producer as well as director on multiple award-winning TV documentaries, fiction and docufiction formats for German TV channels.
In 2017 Karmalker started working on German-Kenyan facts and fiction projects as show runner, writer and director. Among them is the high-end TV drama series "Country Queen" in partnership with Netflix, ZDFarte, the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and Deutsche Welle-Akademie. "Country Queen" launched on Netflix in mid-July 2022 and held top 1 position for over five weeks, and top 10 position for about two months. In March 2023, Ravi's feature film "Chaguo" was accepted by Netflix and immediately after launch became one of Netflix's top 10 most-watched films in Kenya. "Chaguo" has so far received a total of thirteen nominations at international festivals, including four awards.
Currently, he is preparing a package of six international series with partners in South Africa, Spain, India, the Emirates, Switzerland and Germany as well as the second season of "Country Queen" on behalf of Netflix.
Ravi Karmalker & Good Karma Upon his breakthrough as a journalist and filmmaker, in the early 2000s at Westdeutscher Rundfunk, Karmalker was nicknamed "Good Karma" by his colleagues, deriving from his family name Karmalker. He then used this nickname to found a series of "Good Karma" companies: Good Karma Productions (Cologne, 2005), Good Karma Fiction Gmbh (Berlin, 2015), Good Karma Global Gmbh (Berlin, 2017), Good Karma Fiction Africa Ltd (Nairobi, 2018). Drawing on these experiences and responding to the growing needs of the international film and series market for cross-border cooperation, Ravi has recently professionalized his Good Karma approach once again: with the founding of Good Karma Fiction International (Cologne, 2023).
Karmalker's films and TV series have received numerous nominations and awards: ***German Business Film Award 2006 ***German Television Award 2008, Best Reportage ***Nomination Grimme-Preis 2009, Best Documentary ***AWO TV Award for investigative Film journalism ***Nomination, Documentary Director's Award 2016, German Academy for Television) ***Nomination Golden Sparrow 2018, Section Children's Film *** Prix Jeunesse UNICEF Special Prize 2020 ***Eldoret Film Festival 2022, Best Feature Film ***Kalasha Awards 2022, Best Feature Film (Nomination) *** Kalasha Awards 2022, Best Director (Nomination) ***Kalasha Awards 2022, Best Viewers Choice (Feature) (Nomination) ***Kitale Film Week 2023, Best Screenplay ***Kitale Film Week 2023, Best Film (Nomination) ***Swahili International Film Festival & Awards 2022, Honourable Mention, Best Feature Film ***Kalasha Awards 2022, Best TV Drama (Nomination) ***Kalasha Awards 2022, Best Viewers Choice (TV Drama) (Nomination) *** Eldoret Film Festival 2022, Best Documentary ***Africa International Film Festival 2022, Best Documentary (Nomination) ***Kitale Film Week 2023, Best Documentary Film (Nomination) ***Under Our Skin Film Festival Kenya 2023, Best Documentary Film etc...
