Petr Kamil Ponec: From Flat Whites to an Author-Driven Pohoda
Petr Kamil Ponec is from Brno, and he found his way to film through a multimedia-focused high school. Alongside filmmaking, he studied animation, graphic design, sculpture, and art history. Over time, one thing became clear: what interested him most was storytelling. He originally aimed for screenwriting at FAMU, but in the end he was accepted into directing. He enjoys directing, yet he still feels that writing is slightly closer to him. It’s more accessible, freer, less dependent on a whole production machine. Sometimes all you need is paper and a pencil.
After finishing his bachelor’s degree, he spent a year working in hospitality. It wasn’t a carefully planned move – more of a necessary pause – but it showed him with surprising precision where he wanted to head next. When, as a graduate, he later received an email about CME Content Academy, he initially considered applying for a master’s in directing at the same time. In the end, he chose to bet solely on the Academy, a year of intensive contact with practice felt more urgent than continuing along the traditional academic track.
At FAMU, he experienced directing as a solid craft, with theory, but also regular hands-on shooting. CME Content Academy then worked as an extension. Here, he is taught by creators who make their living through directing and development today. While film school gave him space to explore the language of cinema, at the Academy he feels he’s hearing “real-world information” – insights directly tied to how television is actually made now. He often comes back to the way Michal Reitler formulates things, longer study blocks with Jiří Charvát and Tereza Zemanová, especially in the area of R&E, have influenced him strongly as well.
Reality and entertainment are currently his main laboratory. Petr is interning with an R&E team, contributing to preparations for The Bachelor as well as another project led by Kateřina Pavlík, and gradually getting to know a world he previously experienced mostly as a viewer. He’s fascinated by working with non-actors, and by casting as a place where in a short amount of time different layers of human behaviour surface. In this environment, his directing perspective naturally connects with a dramaturgical one, which is also why he’s drawn to the role of a story producer, somewhere on the border between the set and the literary development phase.
As an author, he gravitates toward the absurd, the fantastical, and surrealism. He likes projects that seem strange at first glance, only to reveal, gradually, that they’re built on entirely ordinary human emotions. Recently, he wrapped shooting his debut feature Pohoda, a dreamy, dialogue-driven comedy he wrote, directed, edited, and partly shot himself. The film is now in post-production, and for Petr it represents an important counterbalance to television work: a space where he can “exhale” in a purely authorial mode.
He speaks about the future with restraint, but with obvious curiosity. In scripted work, he’s most interested in development and the work of shaping a theme. In reality, he’d like to experience the production of The Bachelor, or formats like The Farm, not so much because of any specific title, but because he’s drawn to the mechanism of how a story is born in the field. He knows he wants to be part of projects where humour, close observation of people, and a certain measure of “madness” meet genuine humanity.