29/07/2026 - The Czech filmmaker is moving into fiction with a mobile-phone-shot BDSM-set drama about acceptance, control and the pressures surrounding intimacy and motherhood

Having co-directed the most popular Czech documentary in the history of the domestic box office Caught in the Net (read our news), and having recently helmed the OnlyFans-focused documentary Virtual Girlfriends, Czech documentary filmmaker Barbora Chalupová is now making her fiction feature film debut with Madam, an intimate contemporary drama about loneliness, control and the tension between personal freedom and social expectations, set against the world of professional BDSM.

Written by Chalupová and Monika Dembińska, Madam follows thirtysomething Nela (Karin Bílíková) who works at night as professional dominatrix Madam Chimera. Her professional world is governed by rules, boundaries and emotional distance, while privately she longs for closeness and acceptance. But when she decides to freeze her eggs, those carefully maintained boundaries begin to weaken. A wealthy elderly businessman called Václav, who’s accustomed to power, asks her to play his estranged daughter, touching on Nela’s own experience of paternal abandonment. Meanwhile, divorced mechanic and devoted father Ondřej offers her the possibility of intimacy without pretence.

The project grew directly out of Chalupová’s documentary work. While making Virtual Girlfriends, she met a professional dominatrix whose work challenged many of her assumptions, prompting two years of research into the milieu, which eventually formed the basis of the screenplay. A practising dominatrix advised the production team on choreography, while real clients and non-professional performers appear alongside actors.

“Our protagonist is a professional dominatrix, but we don’t portray her as a femme fatale or as a victim,” producer Eva Rejč explained to Cineuropa. “For us, she’s an ordinary woman looking for intimacy and acceptance.” Rather than using BDSM as a spectacle, the film shifts its focus towards relationships, power and vulnerability, situating Nela’s deepest insecurities outside the controlled studio environment.

Chalupová combines improvisation and naturalistic performances with a stylised visual concept. The entire feature is being shot on two mobile phones, which is an aesthetic rather than a budgetary choice. “Using mobile phones allows us to get closer,” Rejč clarified. “We can move faster, work in smaller spaces and get closer to the characters.” Her visual approach contrasts suburban housing estates with the tightly controlled interiors of the BDSM studio. For Chalupová, whose feature-length work has so far been rooted in documentary, Madam represents a deliberate bridge into fiction. “We see Madam as a kind of bridge between her documentary work and directing fiction,” Rejč specified, ahead of the filmmaker’s larger-scale family adventure feature, Electric Wonder.

Madam’s cast also includes Jan Vlasák, Anita Krausová, Gabriela Míčová and Jakub Gottwald. Principal photography is expected to wrap by the end of September, with completion due for January 2027. The film’s producers are currently seeking sales representation, distribution partners and festival programmers.

Madam is being produced by Eva Rejč and Pavla Klimešová for Helium Film, with Fork Film co-producing. The film is backed by the Czech Audiovisual Fund, Creative Europe – MEDIA and the Pilsen Regional Film Fund.