Two Czech animated films remain in Oscar race despite Jarcovjáková snub
The film I’m Not Who I Want to Be by director Klára Tasovská, did not make the Oscar shortlist of fifteen international feature films. But Czech filmmakers succeeded this year in another category. The shortlist for Best Animated Short Film includes Hurricane and I Died in Irpin. The co-produced film Mr. Nobody Against Putin is also in contention.
Hurricane is the work of director Jan Saska. It tells the story of an idiosyncratic outsider named Hurricane, who is loud and naïve but has a good heart. He moves through a world that appears ordinary at first glance, yet beneath the surface is full of absurd situations, small tragicomic conflicts, and subtle social criticism.
The black-and-white tragicomic romance, set in Prague’s Žižkov district in the 1990s, was animated by several dozen creators from the Czech Republic, France, Slovakia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Radio Prague’s Zdeňka Kuchyňová spoke to the director of the animated film, who described the motivation behind the project:
“It’s called Hurricane because that’s the name of the main character. He’s a bit carefree, someone who had his best years in the early 1990s and got somewhat stuck there. He also took his nickname from Dalibor Janda’s hit song Hurikán. He’s a character who lives in a world similar to ours. There are songs playing on the radio, everyday things around him. I liked that in the song’s lyrics, it sounds like a young boy on the run, but when you really listen, it’s actually quite bleak. There’s a motive for him trying to do something while at the same time failing. That’s what appealed to me; it often becomes a kind of adventure arc of his life.”
For Saska, it is his professional debut. But it is not his first time on the Oscar shortlist. He previously reached the shortlist with his student film Happy End in 2015. Now he is once again in the running for the golden statuette.
“Sometimes I feel like I died in Irpin,” says the protagonist and also the author of the second animated short film with an Oscar chance, Anastasia Falileyeva. In the Czech-Ukrainian documentary diary I Died in Irpin, she documents her thoughts from the first days of the Russian occupation.
In addition to the two animated films mentioned, the Danish documentary Mr. Nobody Against Putin also made it onto the shortlist. Czech filmmakers participated in its creation as co-producers and contributed to production, music, and post-production. The film, about Russian teacher Pavel “Pasha” Talankin, who documents Russian propaganda and life in a small town during the war, is among the 15 shortlisted feature-length documentary films.
Czech filmmakers did not succeed in the international feature category
In the Best International Feature Film category, jurors selected from countries and regions around the world. The Czech Film and Television Academy nominated I’m Not Who I Want to Be by director Klára Tasovská. But the formally distinctive portrait of photographer Libuše Jarcovjáková, composed of thousands of photographs, did not make the shortlist.
Each year, the Czech candidate for the Oscar in the Best International Feature Film category is selected by the Czech Film and Television Academy (ČFTA), which also awards the Czech Lion prizes. This year, academy members voted among three feature films preselected by the ČFTA presidium.
Several filmmakers objected to the changes in the selection of the Czech Oscar candidate last week in an open letter. “We don’t like the fact that the presidium did not communicate this change in any way with the academy’s membership and instead directly announced the selection of three candidates, while labeling one of the films as the best candidate,” explained producer Jan Macola.
Another change this year was the postponement of both the voting deadline and the announcement of the Czech Oscar candidate, which in recent years had taken place at the beginning of September. The academy wants to give the producers of the selected film more time to prepare a competitive campaign.
The final list of nominations will be announced on January 22. The Academy Awards ceremony will take place on Monday, March 16, 2026.
