Karelov was born in the Bogorodskoye village into a peasant family, one of the four children. His parents soon moved to Drezna and applied to a secondary school: his mother Maria Andreevna Karelova — as a teacher, and his father Yefim Trofimovich Karelov — as a stoker and gardener. During the early 1950s the family moved to Podolsk. In 1949 Yevgeny tried to enter VGIK, but failed and entered the regional Pedagogical University, Faculty of Physical Culture. In a year he successfully entered VGIK and in 1955 he finished the directing courses led by Grigori Aleksandrov and started working at Mosfilm. Simultaneously he finished the Pedagogical University and joined the Federation of Sport Movies to promote sports culture. Among his projects was a war dramaThe Third Half about The Death Match that happened in the Nazi-occupied Kiev, a TV comedySeven Old Men and a Girl about a young coach assigned to train a group of "hopeless" elderly men and a screenplay When I'm a King dedicated to the Soviet ice hockey coach Yuri Ulianov which was made into a documentary after his death. In 1968 Karelov directed Two Comrades Were Serving where Oleg Yankovsky played one of his first roles. It depicted the events of the Russian Civil War shown from both Red and White perspectives. The White Armyporuchik Alexander Brusentsov played by Vladimir Vysotsky turned into one of his biggest movie roles in the entire career. Karelov later returned to revolutionary events with Those Who Saved Fire and the High Rank dilogy, both with Evgeny Matveev in the lead, director's favourite actor and a close friend. Karelov also produced a number of films aimed at children and youth, including Smoke in the Forest based on the story by Arkady Gaidar and Nakhalyonok based on Don Tales by Mikhail Sholokhov. In 1965 he directed the family comedy Children of Don Quixote about a goofy head of maternity clinic and his sons. It was among the first leading roles by Anatoly Papanov and the only role by Andrey Belyaninov, the head of the Federal Customs Service of Russia during the 2000s. In 1976 he directed a TV mini-seriesTwo Captains based on the popular children's novel by Veniamin Kaverin who served as a screenwriter and added several scenes along the way. After the work on Two Captains was finished, the film crew went to Pitsunda to have a rest. On 11 July 1977 Karelov died of heart failure while swimming in the sea. Boris Tokarev and Evgeny Matveev who witnessed it managed to pull out his body, but Karelov was already dead by that time. He was buried in the family tomb at the Podolsk cemetery. He was survived by his wife Tatiana Germanovna Karelova and daughter Marina. On 4 November 2016 a new boulevard in the memory of Yevgeny Karelov was opened in Podolsk where two monuments were placed: one depicting Karelov, and another — the boy from his Nakhalyonok movie.
