Let’s start our list with BUFF, the International Film Festival of children and youth films in Malmö, Sweden, which took place from 11 to 17 March and screened three Czech animated shorts: a festivals favorite Don't Blow It Up by Alžbeta Mišejková Mačáková from a respected animation production house MAUR film about two quarrelling girls who became balloons and need to come down from the clouds to save their cat, Jan Míka's stop-motion The Goose, telling a story of a little boy who wants to become a famous football player but first has to win a match on his own backyard, and Mud Pie by Kateřina Karhánková, previously screened also at the last Cinekid.

Vilnius IFF Kino Pavasaris chose two coproductions of Czech Republic and Poland: The feature Borders of Love by Tomasz Winski, following a couple who explores their own intimacy, increasingly pushing the limits of how far they can go in love and sex, which screened in Panorama section of the festival, and Bogna Kowalczyk´s documentary Boylesque about the eighty-year-old queer performer Lulla La Polaca who hasn’t given up on finding love, which was a part of Critics Choice section.

Adéla Komrzý and Tomáš Bojar's award-winning documentary Art Talent Show following the Prague Academy of Arts' entrance exams, and the challenge of discovering the real talents in the crowds of applicants, was shown at True/False Film Fest taking place in Columbia, Missouri.

Three Czech films were presented in various sections of Hong Kong IFF, held at the turn of March and April. Eastern Front, the latest work by prolific Ukrainian-born documentarist Vitaly Mansky, co-directed by Yevhen Titarenko, offering a unique perspective on the war through the eyes of Ukrainian paramedics, which world premiered at this year's Berlinale, was a part of Hong Kong IFF's Masters & Auteurs section. Michal Blaško's Victim, a suspenseful drama about a woman seeking justice in a racist society, which has been previously screened at major festivals such as Venice or Toronto, was a part of the World Cinema section, while The Ear, Karel Kachyňa's famous banned film from 1968, was selected for Kaleidoscope section.

Cleveland IFF invited two Czech features to participate at its George Gund III Memorial Central and Eastern European Competition: dystopian feature Ordinary Failures, a Czech Republic/Hungary/Italy/Slovakia coproduction directed by Romanian director Cristina Grosan, which premiered last year at Venice sidebar Giornate degli Autori and Butterfly Vision by Maksym Nakonechnyi – a Ukraine/Czech Republic/Croatia/Sweden coproduction about Lilia who struggles to resume her life in Ukraine as a soldier and wife. 

Ann Arbor Film Festival held in Michigan screened in North American premiere the documentary opera Kapr Code featuring the contradictory life of progressive Czech composer Jan Kapr. The film explores the nature of memory, using Kapr’s personal amateur films manifesting his humour, inner struggles and desire to leave traces for eternity.

Kapr Code was also selected by Crossing Europe IFF in Austrian Linz, together with other six Czech films: aforementioned documentaries Eastern Front, and Art Talent Show, and The Visitors by Veronika Lišková, following a young Czech anthropologist, Zdenka, who moves with her family to Norway, to study how life is changing in polar regions, which will appear in The Architecture and Society section. The festival also invited two fiction features: Ordinary Failures, and Tereza Nvotová's Nightsiren will screen in the section Night Sight, and Cristina Grosan's coproduction short Along Came a Prince. Nightsiren will also appear in Panorama section of Beijing IFF held at the end of April.

The documentary Good Old Czechs by Tomáš Bojar, a unique poetic form of archive storytelling with never-before-seen footage following two Czechoslovak airmen during the WW2 will compete in Argentinian BAFICI film festival, taking place in the second half of April.

The prestigious DOK.fest Munich will screen five Czech documentary features: already mentioned The Visitors, Art Talent Show, and Eastern Front in its Best of Fests section and also Blix not Bombs by Greta Stoklassa, a portrait of a UN diplomat, who had played a crucial role in the fight against terrorism at the beginning of the millennium, which, together with The Visitors recently participated at Canadian Hot Docs and also at CPH:DOX. 

GoEast festival in German Wiesbaden focusing on films with an Eastern European background invited Cristina Grosan's Ordinary Failures to its competition, the Latvia/Czech Republic feature documentary D Is for Division by Latvian director David Simanis to Symposium section, and a collection of nine Czech animated shorts for its section named Czech Anidocs, prepared by Institute of Documentary Films: two are by Diana Cam Van Nguyen – award-winning Love, Dad from 2021, and Apart from 2019, Eliška Kerbachová's Annecy-selected documentary animation short At Spiral's End, depicting the struggle with addiction through visual symbols and shortcuts, Zoe Eluned Aiano and Anna Benner's Blackandwhite, a Czech Republic/Germany coproduction from 2019, Daniela Hýbnerová's student film Mysophonia Orchestra, the famous Daughter by Daria Kashcheeva, Chase by Michaela Režová, S p a c e s by Nora Štrbová, based on the personal story of the author and her brother who got a brain tumor diagnosis, and animated documentary Forget Me Not from 2019 by Adéla Križovenská.

OFF Camera festival in Polish Krakow, held at the turn of April and May – the last festival of this report, screens Adam Sedlák's BANGER., shot on an iPhone. An adrenaline-fueled ride through the city, full of rap and cocaine is set against the backdrop of a single Friday night.