Uli Gaulke was born on August 19, 1968, in Schwerin. After finishing school, he studied computer sciences as well as theatre and film studies, before he took up directing at the "Konrad Wolf" Academy of Film and Television in Babelsberg. In 1996, he began making short movies, including "Irgendwo in Deutschland" (1996) and "Niemand lacht rückwärts" (1998). His 30-minute documentary "Quién es el último – Wer ist der Letzte" (1997) won him several awards at different international film festivals. In 2001, Gaulke received the German Film Award for his graduation film "Havanna, mi amor", in which he portrayed Cuban telenovela fans.

At the Berlinale 2003, Gaulke premiered his documentary "Heirate mich - Casate conmigo". The movie depicts the complicated relationship between a German man and his Cuban wife who has followed him to Germany. In October 2006, Gaulke presented his third feature documentary at the renowned film festival in Pusan, Korea: "Comrades in Dreams – Leinwandfieber", a humorous, well-observed portrait of four cinema operators from Africa, Korea, India and the United States.

In 2007 he shot "Die Jahrhundertflut" for TV, which reconstructs the events during the flood catastrophe in the summer of 2002 using a mixture of documentary shots and reconstructed scenes. At the Hofer Filmtage 2009, "Pink Taxi" celebrated its premiere. The documentary focuses on a Moscow taxi service that transports exclusively women. In "As Time Goes By in Shanghai" (2013), Gaulke portrayed the world's oldest jazz band musicians, seven Chinese from Shanghai, whom he accompanied to the world's most important jazz festival in Rotterdam.

Between 2011 and 2013, Gaulke also filmed three episodes of the documentary series "Waschen. Schneiden. Reden.", which observes young hairdressers and their equally young customers in different milieus. The five-part documentary series "Die Ostdeutschen - 25 Wege in ein neues Land" and the documentary film "Goodbye G.I." (both 2014), which accompanies the gradual evacuation of the Heidelberg US garrison Patrick Henry Village, were also produced for television. In 2016 Gaulke was one of the numerous directors of the 24-hour documentary project "24 h Bayern - Ein Tag Heimat", which was broadcast in full length on 5 June 2017 by the Bayerischer Rundfunk.

Uli Gaulke's next documentaries produced for the big screen were "Sunset Over Hollywood" (2018) about the agile inhabitants of a retirement home for former Hollywood filmmakers and "Ihr Jahrhundert – Frauen erzählen Geschichte" ("Century of Women", 2024) about a number of pioneering senior women from all over the world.