Successful weekend for Czech cinema: Awards from Berlinale and BAFTA
It was a successful weekend for Czech cinema. At the international showcase Berlinale, the jury selected the Czech-Slovak film Kdyby se holubi proměnili ve zlato (If Pigeons Turned to Gold) as Best Documentary. Meanwhile, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) awarded a film with Czech co-production – Pan Nikdo proti Putinovi (Mr. Nobody Against Putin).
The jury at Berlinale 2026 praised the inventive directorial voice of Czech filmmaker Pepa Lubojacki, who, in her film shot on a mobile phone camera, explores why her brother and two cousins ended up homeless and struggling with addiction.
“Documenting a Sisyphean struggle against family addiction, this documentary employs a refreshing range of cinematic techniques to engage the audience in the filmmaker’s quest to break a family heritage of addiction.”
Here is the jury’s official statement explaining why If Pigeons Turned to Gold was awarded Best Documentary. In her acceptance speech, Lubojacki highlighted how society tends to overlook people experiencing homelessness.
“I spent seven years making this film, and it was a really solitary journey. And I experienced a lot of judgment, a lot of not very nice things towards my relatives. I experienced how it is that they are invisible. They are being pushed to the side of our society. This award means that they are in the spotlight. That they matter.”
“Have you ever mourned the death of someone who is still alive?” asks Lubojacki, who, in the documentary, meets her cousin David in a hospital where he had both his legs amputated. Her older brother has lived for ten years in an unfinished construction, while her second cousin lives in a garage and collects electronic waste.
“This prize will give me a voice to speak up for people who suffer from addiction and for people who are unhoused. And there are so many people; there is an epidemic. It’s time to put aside the shame and to speak up about addiction because systemic change is the only change possible for us. Without speaking about it, there will never be change.”
Thanks to its victory at the Berlinale, the film can now compete for the Academy Awards. In addition to the Best Documentary award, If Pigeons Turned to Gold also received the Caligari Film Award, becoming the first Czech or Slovak film to earn this honor.
Meanwhile, another film created in Czech co-production called Mr. Nobody Against Putin received the BAFTA award for Best Documentary.
“Four years ago, I got a very unexpected message from someone I never expected to hear from. A teacher in a tiny town called Karabash, Russia, wanted to show the world something terrible happening in his school. He wanted to show how quickly totalitarianism can take over a school, a workplace, a government. And how our complicity becomes fuel in that fire.”
Said American documentarian David Borenstein, who created the film together with Russian director Pavel Talankin. Talankin is a teacher by profession who shot the footage and managed to smuggle the material out of Russia, and he himself was forced to leave his homeland.
Mr. Nobody Against Putin was co-produced by the Danish production company Made in Copenhagen and the Czech company PINK. Before winning the BAFTA, the film had already been nominated for an Oscar.
