Josef Urban is a graduate of Charles University, Faculty of Science, where he studied engineering geology and hydrogeology. The former national white-water kayak team member began writing after finishing the "Czech Rafting"an exploratory project mapping the deepest canyons on earth. The successful travelog, The Deepest Valley of the World, came into being in 1998. In the same year, Urban's first authorial film The Testament was made, which won one of the main awards at the IFF of Mountaineering Films in Teplice. The story tells of the author's first solo trip down the Nepalese wild river Buri Gandaki. Habermann's Mill, today a cult book, became a bestseller in 2000, and its screenwriting version brought the Orfeus Film Award to Urban, awarded within the Czech Lion Award (Sazka Award). Together with Dan Krzywon, Urban shot a documentary drama on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the Munich Agreement, and the film Where the Stones Roll, dedicated to the "Lestina massacre" in 1945.