03/11/2025 - Czech filmmaker Barbora Chalupová investigates what it truly means to perform intimacy in the digital marketplace of OnlyFans

Czech filmmaker Barbora Chalupová, co-director of the documentary box-office success Caught in the Net [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] about online predators, turns her attention to another contemporary online phenomenon in her latest work Virtual Girlfriends [+see also:
interview: Barbora Chalupová
film profile], which world-premiered in the main competition Opus Bonum at the Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival. Adopting a “cinéma vérité” approach, Chalupová explores the monetisation of digital desire at the intersection of technology, sexuality, and identity, observing the private realities behind the performances on OnlyFans.

The director follows three women managing OnlyFans accounts, each at a different stage of their online careers. The most experienced, Inked Dory, has turned her presence on the platform into full-time work, hosting live-streaming events and conducting workshops for women seeking to start or improve their own accounts. The workshop serves as the introduction to the film’s trio of protagonists. Rosalinda, who performs masked in a balaclava, has recently begun treating her account as a job, while Tinix, who works in a call centre, experiments with content in an effort to gain visibility and establish herself on the platform.

Using an observational structure and time-lapse editing, Chalupová and editor Jakub Jelínek construct distinct character arcs for each protagonist. Inked Dory, already established in the OnlyFans community, offers insight into the everyday reality of an influencer’s working routine and the frustrations of live-streaming when the demand is faltering. Despite her professional status, she remains subject to the vagaries of algorithms and the challenge of sustaining attention and income in the ever-shifting attention economy.

Rosalinda, a mother of a young child, performs between childcare duties and family life. While maintaining a relationship with her partner, she also cultivates a virtual bond with a devoted fan who provides her with affection and material gifts. Tinix, meanwhile, attempts to transition from her day job to full-time content creation, testing different niches to attract followers. Her story, marked by uncertainty and emotional tension, offers an unvarnished view of the labour involved in online adult entertainment. She also provides the most psychologically revealing reflections on motivation and self-perception among the three.

Chalupová does not approach OnlyFans primarily as a social or cultural phenomenon, though such commentary inevitably emerges as a by-product of the central narrative. Instead, her focus lies on the mechanisms of making a living through digital intimacy: posting images and videos, engaging in live chats, and, as the title suggests, performing the role of a “virtual girlfriend” within parasocial relationships. By patiently observing these routines, the documentary exposes the continuous effort required to maintain visibility and the emotional costs that accompany this type of labour. As the film progresses, the protagonists’ personal and psychological dimensions come to the fore, gradually revealing both the motivations behind and the toll exacted by their chosen form of online self-presentation, therefore demystifying get-rich schema on OnlyFans and the illusory glamour.

Virtual Girlfriends stands apart from pop documentaries about internet culture or digital celebrity by shifting focus towards the socio-psychological dimension of OnlyFans labour and its impacts on personal lives and psyches while leaning to social documentary with pop aesthetics. Without moral judgement, Chalupová’s time-lapse observation, captured mostly in fixed compositions by DoP Šimon Havel, reveals the emotional and practical demands of sustaining an illusion of intimacy for profit, and the inevitable erosion of privacy that follows when one’s livelihood depends on visibility and attention.

Virtual Girlfriends is produced by Helium Film and co-produced by Super Film and Soul Food. Aerofilms handles theatrical release in the Czech Republic on November 11 and Association of Slovak Film Clubs handles theatrical release in Slovakia starting on November 13.