The two CLAW films founders share a background in film studies at Masaryk University and production at FAMU. Before taking the plunge into business together, they worked in development, production, distribution, and festival settings, both Czech and Slovak. Kaprálová collaborated on documentary projects at the production company D1film and worked for the VOD platform DAFilms, while Mamojková developed her producing practice at FAMU and during a period of studies at Utrecht University, concentrating on sociology and gender studies, alongside early auteur projects with socially engaged, identity-driven themes.

CLAW films has a curatorial focus on emerging voices and younger authorial perspectives, both in terms of form and subject matter. Their projects tackle themes such as identity, mental health, ecological anxiety, and social alienation, frequently grounded in experience and articulated through formally open or hybrid approaches. Rather than separating arthouse and genre cinema, Mamojková and Kaprálová treat genre as a flexible structural tool, drawing on horror, sci-fi, and fairy-tale elements to expand the expressive and audience potential of auteur-driven work.

From personal testimony to international recognition

CLAW films’ strongest validation to date is If Pigeons Turned to Gold, the feature debut by Pepa Lubojacki, a Czech-Slovak coproduction. Premiered in the Berlinale Forum, the festival’s section dedicated to formally and politically exploratory work, Lubojacki’s film went on to win the Berlinale Documentary Award, a stunning achievement for a Czech documentary debut.

If Pigeons Turned to Gold is a first-person, time-lapse chronicle of addiction and its impact on family relationships, following the director’s brother and two cousins as their lives diverge over time. Rather than adopting an observational distance, Lubojacki remains embedded in the material, taking a stance in between care and self-preservation. The film operates through a dual visual strategy: composed, high-resolution footage mapping temporal and spatial continuity, and iPhone-shot material that introduces an intimate and raw counterpoint. This is further extended by AI-animated archival photographs and diary-based voiceover.

Conceived less as a social-issue documentary than as a study of the limits of relationships, the film examines what it means to remain close to people in distress we cannot “save,” foregrounding the ethical tension between intervention and detachment. Its combination of essayistic construction, DIY texture, and darkly inflected humor situates Lubojacki’s work within a broader strand of contemporary European hybrid nonfiction, while also defining CLAW films’ approach: formally articulated, auteur-driven projects developed for an international arthouse audience.

We can see a related trajectory in How Long Until We Die Out?, Juliana Moska’s upcoming feature debut documentary, currently in postproduction. Produced by CLAW films with support from the Czech Audiovisual Fund, the film is scheduled for completion in autumn 2026.

Moska’s project starts from her personal experience as the only red-haired member of her family and expands into a reflection on otherness, stereotyping, and mechanisms of exclusion. At the same time, it introduces a secondary layer that connects the idea of red-haired “extinction” to ecological and societal anxieties, linking the director’s unexpected confrontation with illness and bodily vulnerability to global narratives of disappearance and instability. How Long Until We Die Out? combines essayistic narration with participatory elements and a deliberately ironic tonal register.

Documentary as formal and social inquiry 

CLAW films’ interest in hybrid nonfiction carries on with its coproduction of Action Item, directed by Paula Ďurinová. Premiering in 2025 in Karlovy Vary’s Proxima Competition and FID Marseille's International competition, the film assembles a constellation of testimonies around burnout, labor precarity, and migration. 

A more speculative register defines World of Walls by Lucia Kašová, a Slovak-led coproduction currently in late postproduction, with completion expected in summer 2026 and a festival premiere anticipated in the fall. Conceived as a dystopian documentary hybrid, the film is set in a near-future South Africa shaped by ecological collapse and social stratification, following two children growing up on opposite sides of a fortified divide.

On the other hand, Thieves of Ashes, directed by David Ticháček and Lumír Košař, exhibits a more materially grounded approach. The project, a Czech-Slovak-Canadian coproduction, is now in advanced postproduction, with completion expected in late 2026 and a festival rollout to follow. Shot in remote areas of the Canadian wilderness under off-grid conditions, the film follows a former couple engaged in the harvest of rare mushrooms, as environmental instability and economic pressure begin to test both their friendship and their stated ideals of independence. The project is also notable for its production model: CLAW films succeeded in securing a Canadian coproduction partner and broadcaster involvement.

Extending the field

Mamojková and Kaprálová also continue to produce shorter, formally adventurous projects that combine hybrid approaches with genre-inflected storytelling. Among the most advanced is Limits to Our Pain by Kvet Nguyễn, her directorial debut, currently in the making as a Czech-Slovak coproduction, with completion expected in 2026.

Drawing on testimonies from the Vietnamese community in former Czechoslovakia, this intimate drama revisits fragmented childhood memories against the backdrop of a rising wave of xenophobia. Confronting collective history with personal lived experience, it asks the question, “What did freedom mean to those who were never truly welcome?” Visually, Nguyễn combines VHS-shot staged scenes with archival footage to evoke the fragility of memory marked by trauma.

Vincel, an experimental horror short by Denisa Müller, reinterprets the folkloric water goblin as a metaphor for contemporary male alienation and online radicalization. Combining live action with stylised 3D animation and a fragmented narrative structure, the project engages with the rise of incel subculture and the circulation of misogynistic ideology in digital environments, translating these dynamics into a symbolic, genre-inflected framework. The project is anticipated to move into production later this year, with completion projected for 2027 and subsequent festival circulation. Also in development is Spectrum, the debut project by Igor Smitka, supported by Creative Europe MEDIA. Conceived as a coming-of-age dramedy, the film follows a group of teenagers navigating identity, belonging, and belief, with a spotlight on the intersection of queerness and religion.

Nora Štrbová’s Salaš is likewise in development, with an expectation of moving into production in 2027. An intimate documentary set in a hut in the Low Tatras mountain range, the story follows a “Gen Z” shepherd who, in a picturesque yet harsh landscape, searches for his place and purpose in life. The film is a sensitive personal portrait, while also encompassing broader themes, from the systemic failures of institutional care to widespread alcoholism to the destructive mechanisms of interpersonal dependency. Formally, Salaš combines observational scenes with magical interventions and DIY footage shot by the main character himself.

Although CLAW films’ core activity remains rooted in documentary and hybrid nonfiction, the producers are increasingly moving into fiction. This shift is embodied by Orla, directed by Marie Lukáčová, which premiered in the Tiger Short Competition at this year’s International Film Festival Rotterdam.

Described as a “rap fairy tale against patriarchy,” Lukáčová’s work combines live action, 2D and 3D animation, and music performance into a layered coming-of-age narrative, addressing ecological imbalance and feminist agency. Its hybrid aesthetic combining 16mm, digital and VHS textures, situates it between cinema, music video, and visual art. The director is also developing her feature-length debut with CLAW films, conceived as a more narrative-driven project grounded in contemporary Czech social reality, signalling a gradual expansion into fiction.

Across its slate, CLAW films functions as an incubator for early-career filmmakers and visual artists  in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, often accompanying projects through extended development processes and international industry platforms. Rather than scaling up output, Mamojková and Kaprálová operate using a flexible, transnational model built on long-term collaboration and coproduction networks.