The 2026 edition of Czech Film Springboard, organised in late September by the Czech Audiovisual Fund/Czech Film Center, presented five feature-length projects to an international group of festival programmers, sales agents, producers, funds and training initiatives. The industry platform once again focused on Czech films at the development or early production stage, offering their teams a space to test their international positioning.

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This year’s selection pointed towards a socially alert generation of Czech filmmakers, many making their fiction debuts after establishing themselves elsewhere, and working with greater confidence across genre and form. Compared with previous editions of the Springboard, the emphasis appeared less on generational self-definition alone, and more on characters embedded in wider systems of class, labour, belief and family responsibility.

Urban inequality and radicalisation sit alongside class-conscious comedy, female autonomy and sex work, as found in Barbora Chalupová’s fiction feature debut, Madam, which Cineuropa covered earlier (see the news). Other themes tackled by the projects include religious guilt and manipulation, as well as a spiritually inflected story about parenthood and grief, with social observation increasingly being carried via the vehicle of genre filmmaking.

Read on for more details of the other four projects besides Madam:

Burnout – Greta Stocklassa (Czech Republic)
Czech-Swedish filmmaker Greta Stocklassa (Blix Not Bombs) is preparing her fiction feature debut, Burnout, a loose adaptation of Petr Šesták’s novel of the same name. The film follows Kryštof, a food courier in his late thirties whose routes across Prague expose the city’s widening social divisions and increasingly politicised battles over public space. His relationship with Klára, an art student involved in environmental activism, gives his frustration a political outlet, but their positions soon diverge. Protest is a choice for her, while economic insecurity structures his daily life. As Kryštof gravitates towards a more radical group, the line between resistance and violence begins to blur. Produced by Marek Novák, of Xova Film, the project examines changing notions of freedom in post-socialist Central Europe through mobility, car ownership and competing claims to the city. Stocklassa plans to combine a controlled style of fiction storytelling with documentary immediacy, using a rawer, Dogme 95-inflected approach for demonstrations, crowds and Kryštof’s movement through Prague. German and Swedish partners are in discussion, while Stocklassa and the project have been selected for the Locarno Residency. Production is tentatively planned for 2028, with completion targeted for spring 2029.

The pitch for The Delivery by Jakub Jirásek (© Czech Film Center)

The Delivery – Jakub Jirásek (Czech Republic)
Jakub Jirásek’s feature debut compresses class and generational tensions into an upper-middle-class villa over a single Saturday afternoon. The social comedy follows 15-year-old Nikola, whose liberal, self-assured parents are unsettled when her classmate David, a food courier from a less privileged background, enters their home. As the teenagers switch between suspicion, embarrassment and attraction, the adults’ attempts at tolerance expose a paternalism they barely recognise in themselves. The family’s convictions are tested when Nikola’s father takes over David’s delivery shift, briefly experiencing the insecurity of platform work without having to live with its consequences. The story uses the teenagers’ developing connection to sharpen its satire of progressive middle-class values. Jirásek is aiming for a post-ironic tone poised somewhere between humour and discomfort. Conventional cinematography will be intercut with mobile-phone footage within the story. Produced by Marek Dusil, of Mannschaft, the low-budget feature is aimed primarily at viewers aged 15-25, with their parents as a secondary audience. A Slovak partner is among the likely collaborators, with further discussions involving Germany, Romania and France. Shooting is provisionally planned for 2027.

The pitch for God Break Down the Door by Vojtěch Novotný (© Czech Film Center)

God Break Down the Door – Vojtěch Novotný (Czech Republic/Slovakia/Lithuania)
Vojtěch Novotný’s feature debut combines psychological drama, thriller and dark comedy, revolving around Bob, a devoutly Catholic 18-year-old sent to a residential treatment centre to lose weight. There, he shares a room with Vítek, a chronically ill nihilist whose worldview unsettles Bob’s moral certainties. A romantic rejection and its fallout draw him into guilt and manipulation, putting his faith under pressure. Novotný treats belief as a conflicted lived experience, rather than a target for satire. The clash between Bob and Vítek supplies the film’s darkly comic charge, with Corpus Christi, First Reformed and Corpo Celeste among the references cited. Produced by Tomáš Pertold, of Perfilm, the Czech-Slovak-Lithuanian project is backed by the Czech Audiovisual Fund and Creative Europe – MEDIA. Slovak producer Anna Mach Rumanová, of filmsomnia, is attached, with a Lithuanian partner under discussion. The project took part in MIDPOINT Feature Launch, where it received the Rotterdam Lab Award, and was later presented at Thessaloniki’s Agora Crossroads Co-production Forum. Production is planned for summer 2027, with completion targeted for 2028.

The pitch for Bruised Knees by Albert Hospodářský (© Czech Film Center)

Bruised Knees – Albert Hospodářský (Czech Republic)
Following his Karlovy Vary Proxima title Brutal Heat, director Albert Hospodářský is developing Bruised Knees, a film in which birth, grief and spiritism intersect over the course of a winter’s day on the outskirts of Prague. Niko, a 25-year-old Romani man avoiding the impending birth of his child, sets out to return two unruly children home after rescuing them from shopping-centre security guards. As the journey unfolds, the dynamic reverses and the children begin to guide him instead. In parallel, single mother Selma agrees to a séance intended to help her eight-year-old son contact his deceased father. The two storylines ultimately meet in the same apartment building, linking an attempt to reach the dead with the arrival of a new life. The movie is built around two contrasting modes: Niko’s strand will use kinetic, run-and-gun filmmaking, with Sean Baker’s Tangerine among the references, while Selma’s apartment-bound storyline moves towards chamber drama and a more spiritual, actor-led register. Hospodářský plans to shoot on mobile phones, seeking a visual meeting point between guerrilla realism and psychological intimacy. The movie is being staged by Ondřej Lukeš, of Beginner’s Mind, and principal photography is planned for winter 2027-2028, with completion expected in summer 2028. The team is seeking a sales agent, distributors, streaming partners and potentially one international co-producer.