Cristina Groșan: Across borders and genres

Hungarian-Romanian filmmaker Cristina Groșan is among the growing number of directors who have made the Czech Republic their creative base. Following her graduation from university in 2012, she directed six short films that travelled widely across the international festival circuit, screening at Palm Springs, Clermont-Ferrand, Sarajevo, and Thessaloniki, among others. Her breakout short, Holiday at the Seaside, a portrait of a mother-daughter relationship, screened at over 40 festivals and attracted more than a million views online. But her cultural ties soon led to collaborations in the Czech Republic across various projects, as well as a teaching position at FAMU International.

Born into a mixed Romanian-Hungarian family, Groșan developed an early interest in visual storytelling, beginning with photography and theatre before transitioning to film. She debuted with the Hungarian feature film Things Worth Weeping For (2019), a coming-of-age drama about a young woman navigating the inertia of early adulthood who discovers a dead body while moving out of her student apartment. The film premiered at the Sarajevo Film Festival and was subsequently screened at over 25 international festivals before securing distribution on Netflix Hungary. Her next project, the short film Along Came a Prince (2020), marked her first collaboration with Czech production company Xova Film and producer Marek Novák. Set within a teenage theatre workshop, the short explores issues of consent, the masculinity crisis, and entrenched gender norms. The film received recognition at the Prague International Film Festival and the Brest European Short Film Festival.

The collaboration with Novák of Xova Film continued with Groșan’s sophomore feature, Ordinary Failures (2022), which premiered in the Giornate degli Autori section at the 79th Venice International Film Festival, where she received the Best Director Under 40 award. A Czech-Hungarian-Italian-Slovak co-production with a script penned by Klára Vlasáková, the film follows three women across different generations as they navigate personal crises amidst a mysterious environmental event that imposes a new world order. Ordinary Failures has been distributed in several territories, including Netflix releases in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary.

Groșan recently co-directed the Czech period miniseries Daughter of the Nation (2024) with Matěj Chlupáček for CANAL+, marking the French platform’s first original production in the Czech Republic. A reimagining of the life of Zdeňka Havlíčková, the unknown daughter of nationally famous journalist Karel Havlíček Borovský, the series portrays her as a defiant teenager during the Czech national revival.

Groșan is currently developing several projects in the Czech Republic. Among them is Angelmaker, a period Western set in Banát, a forgotten corner of the Monarchy where Czechs, Hungarians, and Romanians cohabitate. Inspired by true events, the six-episode series follows a group of women who, having gained autonomy during World War I, confront its loss when men return from the front. Some resort to arsenic poisoning to escape abusive relationships. “It’s a darkly comic exploration of gender roles and survival in a time of chaos,” says Groșan. The series is being developed as a tri-nation co-production with Xova Film, Romanian Tangaj Production and German Wunderlust with an eye toward international broadcasters and streamers.

Also in the development phase is Groșan’s next project, which she has written and plans to direct, titled Dead Mountain, a feature film inspired by actual events in which an international missile defence system, genuinely proposed and widely debated in 2008, is being built on Czech soil. The story follows a group of teenagers whose drone crash-lands on a military base, triggering a chain of paranoia, leading the boys to believe they are the new guerrilla fighters. The project is being developed at ACE Producers Workshop and has secured script development funding from the Czech Audiovisual Fund and Creative Europe MEDIA.

In parallel, Groșan is continuing her collaboration on another English-language film, Pretty Baby, with Hungarian producer Judit Stalter of Laokoon Filmgroup, who not only produced her debut film but was also a co-producer on Ordinary Failures. Pretty Baby follows a young student drawn into an underground egg donation scheme for wealthy clients, where she faces the hidden emotional cost of commodifying her body. “It’s about power, exploitation, and the grey areas of reproductive technology,” Groșan notes. As with her earlier work, Groșan’s forthcoming projects continue to engage with questions of identity, power, and social structures. Her ongoing engagement with Czech and Central European production networks reflects a cross-border orientation that characterises both her professional trajectory and her thematic interests.

Damián Vondrášek: Ethical ambiguities through episodic and auteur storytelling

Damián Vondrášek is a Czech director whose early success with short films has led to a growing body of work across episodic television and long-form narrative. From his student shorts to recent projects in development, Vondrášek consistently explores ethical tensions, examining how power, manipulation and belief intersect within social dynamics.

A graduate of the Directing Department at FAMU in Prague, Vondrášek first gained recognition with Imprisoned (2016), which was selected for both the San Sebastián and Karlovy Vary International Film Festivals and earned a nomination for the Czech Lion’s Magnesia Award for Best Student Film. In Frontier (2020), Vondrášek turned his attention to border control officers confronted with a group of Syrian refugees. The short, which premiered at Trieste, compressed complex socio-political themes into a minimalistic, morally charged story.

His most widely recognised short to date, Rites (2022), marked a further development in tone and perspective with which Vondrášek participated in the development programme Focus SCRIPT - Cinéma de Demain in Cannes. Awarded the Czech Lion for Best Short Film, the story investigates peer pressure and group behaviour among adolescent boys. Drawing from personal reflections, the film presents a restrained, observational view of the rites of youth and of unspoken hierarchies, avoiding easy categorisations or didactic resolutions.

Vondrášek transitioned into television with Five Years (2022), a web series co-written with Sára Zeithammerová for Czech Television’s digital platform. Centred on a sexual assault accusation and its long-term effects, the series adopts a multiperspectival structure, presenting the characters without moral simplification. The project received a Czech Lion nomination for Best Television Series, was selected for Series Mania in Lille, and was later acquired by ARTE. Its critical reception led director David Ondříček to invite Vondrášek to join the second season of King of Šumava. The miniseries revisits the true story of Josef Hasil, a smuggler operating across the Czechoslovak border during the Cold War. Produced for the Czech VOD platform Voyo, the project extends Vondrášek’s work into historical drama, further consolidating his presence in television.

Currently, Vondrášek is developing two literary adaptations for the screen. The first, The Last Goddess, is based on the bestselling novel by Kateřina Tučková, translated into over a dozen languages. Set in the Czech part of the Carpathians, the narrative interweaves personal memory, suppressed history, and spiritual tradition. Developed by Negativ, with screenwriting by Sára Zeithammerová and Hana Něníčková, the series has already attracted interest from multiple broadcasters. For Vondrášek, the appeal lies in both the thematic depth and the structural ambition: “The story spans multiple time periods, primarily the 1990s and 1960s, but it’s rooted in a specific region and its traditions,” he explains. Unlike his previous work, grounded in psychological realism, the project calls for a more cinematic treatment, blending folklore, historical drama, and visual mysticism. “It’s not just a period piece,” he adds, “it’s about searching for roots, uncovering family trauma, and the clash between our modern way of life and an older world governed by the natural rhythm of nature.”

In parallel, Vondrášek is developing Forest Whisper, a psychological horror series based on the debut novel by Kateřina Surmanová. Set in the present day in a remote mountain village, the story centres on a pervasive, unspoken unease surrounding the nearby forest. “It’s about how we deal with the unknown,” he says. “And how mystery, silence, and superstition reverberate through a local community.” The six-part series, with 60-minute episodes, is being developed by Stairway Films, with Kateřina Ondřejková serving as creative producer for Czech Television. Vondrášek sees the project not as genre horror, but rather as a study of hidden group dynamics and psychological tension shaped by the environment. “It explores the fragile relationship between humans and nature, which is beginning to resist human influence,” the director reveals.

Alongside his television work, Vondrášek is also preparing his first auteur feature, New Age, based on an original screenplay he has been writing. The film is a psychological drama exploring how belief systems influence intimacy and identity. At its center is a couple whose relationship begins to fracture when one partner becomes involved with a spiritual leader and her community. The narrative unfolds across three perspectives: the partner drawn in, the one left behind, and the leader herself. “It’s about disinformation, identity crises, and the fragmentation of connection,” Vondrášek notes. The project, while still in development, has already gained international visibility through the development programme Less is More, led by Le Groupe Ouest, providing an early test of its cross-cultural resonance. Whether exploring social tensions or revisiting cultural mythologies, Vondrášek’s work remains committed to examining the moral ambiguity that surfaces when one’s own psychology encounters collective belief.