Although I’ve departed from Karlovy Differ after per week and a half of taking in promising movies within the picturesque spa city, I stay in Czechia. I’m at present in Prague taking inventory of the pageant (extra on that within the close to future) and at last wandering away from cinemas. And whereas I all the time love getting the complete expanse of central and japanese European moviemaking represented at KVIFF, I’m all the time eager to recollect to hunt out the various Czech works that populate this cinematic celebration. On this dispatch, I’m pondering again to a few regional movies I watched at Karlovy Differ, a few which had been honored on the pageant’s conclusion.
The winner of the Proxima Competitors, Czech author/director Martina Buchelová’s “Lover, Not a Fighter,” is a contemporary screwball romance that acutely captures a type of youth tradition that’s struggling to navigate gendered clichés, trendy isolationism, and private loss. It considerations the obnoxious however in the end susceptible Andrej (Adam Kubala), who’s working via his emotions for Miša (Michaela Kostková). However sure hang-ups get in the best way of Andrej expressing his like to her: his immature 20-year-old moodiness, his alcoholism, and his unstable residence life, which entails residing together with his caring grandmother whereas his debt-ridden father dates a considerably youthful lady. These tribulations accumulate right into a frank and endearing coming-of-age work whose visible acumen and intimate realism make for a surprisingly poignant adolescent rom-com.
“Lover, Not a Fighter” strikes with the rhythm of a digital world. Vertical movies, usually mimicking cellphone footage, although generally flexed to vast display screen to carry us again into classical movie language, populate the film. Within the opening, we see a drunk Andrej and a sober Miša having fun with a meet-cute at a tram cease: She tries to assist him, however he’s too unstable to handle (a theme that’ll recur all through Buchelova’s incisive image). They won’t meet once more till Miša’s father, who’s anxious she could be a lesbian as a result of she hasn’t gotten over her earlier break-up, brings her over for a dinner date with Andrej’s delicate cousin Pet’o (František Beleš). Slightly than falling for Pet’o, Miša gravitates to Andrej.
The aforementioned vertical compositions will ultimately report Andrej and Miša’s many dates, their rising consolation in each other, and their tough break up. From there, although the pair aren’t wedded, the movie follows the marriage-remarriage screwball type, albeit with some wrinkles.
What’s particularly refreshing about “Lover, Not a Fighter” is how unfastened but tightly conceived its writing is. The movie is damaged into a number of chapters that transfer forwards and backwards in time and infrequently shift focus from the story’s protagonists to aspect characters. It additionally contains subheads that would both be mimicking texts or inside monologues.
Furthermore, Buchelová doesn’t really feel the necessity to make each scene ladder up right into a grander theme. She permits seemingly extraneous moments: Andrej imagining a boyband in his closet, Miša’s father stealing spoons and investing in constructing an underground bunker, Pet’o‘s dimwitted good friend coming over and inflicting havoc—to solely additional the emotional groundedness and realism of those characters. By the top, we perceptively know each determine with the familiarity of a detailed good friend.
“Lover, Not a Fighter” is additional uplifted by its sport ensemble. Every actor performs each scene, irrespective of how nonsensical, with a sincerity that reaches above the second’s inherent comedy. By treating youth tradition, significantly trendy romance—in all its instability and nervousness—with nice respect, Buchelová crafts a pleasant function debut constructed on sincere relatability.
Taking a decidedly darker flip via Czechia is the writing/directing of Pepa Lubojacki’s abrasively private documentary “If Pigeons Turned to Gold,” which premiered previous to KVIFF on the 2026 Berlinale. Formally experimental and ruthlessly uncooked, the documentary sees Lubojacki contemplating the intergenerational trauma and cyclical drug habit of her household. She primarily focuses her consideration on her brother, a jovial houseless alcoholic man residing in a ramshackle shack, and he or she additionally follows her equally troubled cousins. Via their unhoused lives, she considers her personal psychological well being and the well-meaning impulses that compel her to undergo cycles of supporting, denouncing, and cajoling her brother into sobriety.
Lubojacki employs a chaotic sonic and visible language, composed of grating outbursts of thrumming techno music, intertitle playing cards denoting soul-searching subjects, like “have you ever ever grieved any individual who isn’t useless but,” and childhood images delivered to “life” by AI animation. The latter, which places voices to the images of Pepa and her cousins, inflicting their mouths to maneuver with English as their output, is notably off-putting.
One might see this uncanniness being supposed: Haunting and fractured conceptions of an upbringing stuffed with turmoil and ache hiding behind a child’s smile. All of those parts are emblematic of the shambolic impact of habit to substances and to different folks—in the end, Lubojacki’s repeated confessions that she will’t stop her brother mirror her brother’s resignation that he simply can’t assist however drink—that may trigger a life to spiral into oblivion.
Such an emotional whirlpool presents the chance to drag Lubojacki down too. Because the movie marches towards its finish, her voice turns into increasingly more outstanding, revealing the non-public struggles, together with a latest bout with suicidal ideation, which have troubled her through the saving of her brother and the making of such an intense undertaking.
Her difficulties evoke the documentary’s thesis, uttered by an AI pigeon with a fedora in a bar: “What if pigeons might flip to gold?” The concept being: what if these we dismiss, ignore, and push apart had been handled as treasures? Would it not result in concord, or would it not flip the now invaluable pigeon into one thing to be hunted and possessed? What if a filmmaker noticed each tragedy, harm, and remorse via her lens with a purity that would trigger them to lose themselves within the meaning-making conjured by the recollections and buried anxieties these very photographs encourage? May any filmmaker, or movie for that matter, stand up to that type of unraveling of the soul? In that regard, “If Pigeons Turned to Gold” flies headlong towards the solar of its topic, wings be damned.
“Solely Lovely Issues to Look At,” from author/director Ivan Ostrochovský, is the type of well-meaning movie that’s tough to drag off. A winner of the FIPRESCI Award within the Crystal Globe competitors, the detailed interval piece takes place within the Nineteen Eighties and follows Ingrid (Anna Geislerová), a practical physician hoping to grow to be chief surgeon at her hospital. To these ends, she collides with two boundaries: she’s a lady and never a Communist Get together member.
Extra troubling to viewers, nevertheless, is that she dutifully carries out a coverage in Czechoslovakia that seeks to sterilize Romani ladies. Ingrid doesn’t query the directive. The truth is, she’s fairly expert and environment friendly at carrying it out. That’s, till a brand new orderly, Agáta (Simona Boledovičová), a half-white, half-Romani lady considerably passing as the previous, begins working on the hospital.
Earlier than lengthy, Ingrid and Agáta grow to be shut associates—creating a surrogate mother-daughter relationship. They share their days lounging collectively within the solar and going to the flicks. As they develop nearer, Ingrid begins to query her medical profession and the inherent bigotry in her state-approved surgical practices. Ostrochovský’s movie, due to this fact, is about an oppressor, informed largely from the oppressor’s viewpoint, as they uncover they had been an oppressor and that the folks they had been oppressing are literally human. As soon as once more, pulling off these sorts of narratives is a type of high-wire act that may usually really feel like empty-calorie progressivism.
The intimate performances do maintain Ostrochovský in stability: Geislerová easily kinds an icy exterior with the intent of melting it away, whereas Boledovičová intimates the knot of hiding one’s identification in hopes of being embraced by the dominant tradition. However as a result of a lot of this movie is informed from Ingrid’s viewpoint, Agáta usually feels distant from the first narrative. Since we already know the place Ingrid’s inside wrestle is headed after we attain her realization, it comes with little or no payoff. Worst but, in a ultimate cathartic scene, it’s not a joyous Agáta we see final however a delighted Ingrid—making it seem as if Agáta’s hopes and well being are secondary to Ingrid’s self-awakening. It’s an amazing stumble in a movie that by no means actually finds its footing in its journey towards a press release.
