First Czech documentary submitted to the Oscars: Tasovská’s ‘I'm Not Everything I Want to Be’ selected to represent Czech film
On Monday 11th, it was announced that the Czech Film and Television Academy has selected a documentary, director Klára Tasovská’s ‘I'm Not Everything I Want to Be’, as the Czech entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 98th Academy Awards. The choice of a documentary is a first for the Czech academy.
The Czech Film and Television Academy have announced their candidate for the USA’s 98th Academy Awards (the Oscars), to be held in March 2026, specifically for the category of Best International Feature Film. Czechia is quick off the mark in this announcement; ahead of the deadline on October 1st, only Turkey has also put forward their chosen film.
The film is distinctive in one particular regard: it’s a documentary. Directed by Klára Tasovská, ‘I'm Not Everything I Want to Be’ (Ještě nejsem, kým chci být) is a cinematic portrait of Prague-born photographer Libuše Jarcovjáková. Through its focus on her life and work, it delves into the underground scene of the 1980s in Czechoslovakia, as well as depicting Jarcovjáková’s escape to West Berlin in 1985.
The documentary was created using her diaries and thousands of film photographs, and the academy has called it “a formal, bold documentary about identity and freedom”. Libuše Jarcovjáková herself documented the life of the legendary T-club, a gay club that operated in the heart of the Czech capital under communism. She herself previously recounted her first memories of the place:
“I fell in love with the space during the very first visit. It was so colourful and beautiful and vivid. I just loved the place. It was in the heart of Prague, next to Wenceslas Square, in a small street leading to Jungmann Square. The club was in a basement and there were always people waiting on the steps hoping to get inside, because the place was not open to everyone. There were security guards at the entrance checking visitors. We, the regulars, didn’t need to queue, we came in directly. But it took a long time before I was considered a regular.”
The many photos taken at T-club form a substantial part of ‘I'm Not Everything I Want to Be’, but are not the whole story. Together with samples of Jarcovjáková’s photo shoots for top fashion names in Tokyo and her West Berlin story, the documentary paints a rich picture of Libuše Jarcovjáková as an artist, her reaction to the times she lived in, and her struggle to become the person she needed to be in the face of societal pressures. She narrates the film and presents the thousands of pictures included in her own words.
‘I'm Not Everything I Want to Be’ premiered back in February 2024 at the 74th Berlin International Film Festival. It later had its domestic premiere in Karlovy Vary, and was also included in festivals in Vienna, New York and Turin, and the prestigious Copenhagen International Documentary Festival.
In a new system, the documentary was one of three contenders that the fifteen-member leadership of the Czech Film and Television Academy pre-selected and recommended to voting members of the academy as the “three strongest candidates”. The other two were the road movie Caravan and the drama Broken Voices (Sbormistr).
Several Czech filmmakers protested the changes and the pre-selection of the three potential Oscar nominees in an open letter last week. The American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will announce the Oscar shortlist for the foreign-film category in mid-December, with the final nominations announced on January 22nd.
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