Julia Charakter was born in 1984 in Zhytomyr, Ukraine, and grew up in Dorsten, Germany. As a student, she began working as an editor for newspapers and magazines in 2003. After graduating from high school in 2005, she pursued a Bachelor’s degree in Literary and Media Studies at the University of Paderborn. During her studies, she completed internships in various film and television productions and directed her first two short films: the 15-minute documentary "Herr Wengerzink" (2007), about a retired teacher in Paderborn who defies the odds to keep his antiquarian bookshop alive, and the 30-minute experimental feature "Memory" (2008).

From 2008 to 2012, Charakter completed a master's degree in media studies. Concurrently, from 2009 to 2014, she worked as a freelance TV editor, contributing to projects such as the documentary series "Generation Luxus - Was kostet die Welt" (2013), about seven Germans who spend a limited time working in the production facilities of their favorite clothes and foods.

In 2015, Charakter enrolled at the International Film School Cologne (ifs), where she studied until 2018. During this time, she produced several films, including the seven-minute documentary "My Grandmother and Her Indian Milk Fungus" (2017), a meditation on her grandmother’s serene care of her milk fungus amid the looming war and threats in nearby Mariupol, Ukraine. Her 11-minute film "unbarmherzig" ("Without Mercy", 2017), a hybrid of animation and documentary focused on child abuse and violence in 1960s and '70s orphanages, received widespread attention. The film was screened at Munich's DOK.fest and the Tirana International Film Festival, among others. In 2018, it was selected by German Films for the Next Generation Short Tiger series at the Cannes Film Festival. That same year, Charakter graduated from ifs with the script "Aljoscha und das Feuer", a story about a German-Russian boy in Berlin struggling to gain his mother’s affection.

Following her graduation, Charakter participated in a one-year non-fiction Masterclass at ifs, where she developed the concept for her feature-length documentary "Die Kinder aus Korntal" ("The Children of Korntal"). The film explores decades of abuse in the homes of the Pietist Brethren community in Korntal, one of the largest abuse scandals in the Protestant Church in Germany. In 2022, she brought this project to fruition, and it premiered at the DOK Leipzig festival in 2023, where it won the DEFA Foundation’s Sponsorship Award. The film was released in cinemas in September 2024.

Alongside her filmmaking career, Julia Charakter works in dramaturgy, teaches creative writing, and serves as a personal writing coach.