Czech filmmaker Barbora Chalupová, who co-directed documentary exposé on online predators Caught in the Net [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Barbora Chalupová
scheda film], a behind the scenes portrait of digital intimacy and self-exposure in the age of subscription platforms, in the main competition at the Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival. The film examines the realities behind OnlyFans through the lives of three women building their careers on the platform. The director discussed with Cineuropa the ethics of filming adult content creators, the shifting meanings of authenticity, and her move into fiction filmmaking.

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Cineuropa: Your previous film Caught in the Net explored how predators manipulate children online. Virtual Girlfriends seems to address a different stage of digital intimacy. How did this project emerge?
Barbora Chalupová: People often connect the two films, but Virtual Girlfriends didn’t grow directly out of Caught in the Net. That film showed how predators exploit children; this one looks at how our perception of intimacy and privacy has evolved in the digital age. Today, many adult women are aware of the financial potential of their bodies and how social media reshapes personal relationships. More people now prefer the safety of online intimacy to the complexity of real relationships, and the women in the film are consciously navigating that shift. Creating and selling sexual content has become an efficient way to monetise intimacy, a kind of “home office” work with transparent rules. They pay the platform a share, keep the rest, and set their own limits. But as the film shows, those limits are constantly being tested.

The phenomenon of OnlyFans has become global, yet it’s often portrayed in sensationalist or moralising ways. What did you want to uncover?
That was my starting point. Media coverage usually swings between two extremes, either glorifying the platform as a source of easy money or condemning it outright. I wanted to understand what really happens behind those narratives. Is it as simple as taking off your clothes and becoming rich? Of course not. The reality is far more layered. My goal wasn’t to moralise but to explore the mechanisms and motivations, how intimacy becomes labour, and what that means for people’s emotional lives and relationships.

The film follows three protagonists, each with a different relationship to the platform and to intimacy. How did you find them?
Finding the right protagonists was surprisingly difficult. Although many OnlyFans creators speak openly on podcasts or social media, most declined to take part once they learned it would be a cinema documentary, for them, film still belongs to a different, more public world. There’s a paradox there: many hide their work due to stigma, yet their success depends on visibility. The idea that anyone can join and make easy money is an illusion, only a few are truly successful, while most earn very little and lose control over their content once it’s online. Eventually, I found Inked Dory, who became the key link to the others. She runs workshops for aspiring creators, and through her I met the rest. The final trio reflected exactly what I had envisioned: an established creator, a mother balancing family life, and a newcomer finding her footing. What connects them all is resilience, this work demands not just emotional strength but marketing savvy. Success relies less on appearance than on self-management and the constant performance of authenticity.

Why did the protagonists agree to take part in a film that doesn’t always show them in a flattering light?
The whole process was built on trust and transparency, there was no script, and the protagonists decided what we could film, with the option to stop at any time. Some intimate scenes were shot only after months of building trust, sometimes without the crew present so they could choose what to reveal. When they saw the final film, their reactions were mixed: they might have preferred a more flattering version, but they didn’t want a promotional piece either. They understood the personal cost of this work and didn’t wish to glamorise it. Their honesty became the film’s centre, a reflection of today’s fascination with authenticity and imperfection. A few years ago, they might have asked to cut scenes, but now they see it as a truthful document of who they were at that time.

Given the sensitivity of these themes, how did you balance your responsibility towards the participants with your role as an author?
Responsibility is something you can’t separate from authorship, even when everyone involved gives full consent. These women shared their time, energy, and a part of their lives with me. I never saw them as “subjects”, we built something together, and I feel accountable for how that is represented. At the same time, Virtual Girlfriends is an authorial film, it reflects my own perspective on intimacy, agency, and the digital age. My intention was to spark discussion rather than moral judgement. That’s why premiering at Ji.hlava felt right, documentary audiences tend to be more reflective and less reactionary. But once the film enters wider release, cinemas, television, online platforms, the tone of the responses will inevitably change. I’ll probably tell the protagonists to avoid reading the comments.

What are you working on next?
I’ve been developing a few projects in parallel. My fiction feature debut, Electric Wonder, is a historical adventure for children and their parents inspired by the Czech inventor Prokop Diviš, whose 18th-century experiments with electricity were far ahead of his time. I’m also preparing another fiction feature Turquoise Mountain, inspired by mountaineer Dina Štěrbová, the first woman to climb Cho Oyu in the 1980s.