The Prague-based production company Beginner’s Mind, with a focus on auteur-driven fiction and documentary cinema, is grounded in creative intimacy, ethical production, and an ambition to reach international audiences. Founded by producer Ondřej Lukeš in 2022 shortly after completing his studies at FAMU, Beginner’s Mind reflects the sensibility of a new generation of Czech filmmakers and producers: flexible in form, personal in tone, and attentive to the cultural, social, and environmental contexts in which films are made. Lukeš and producer Jan Čadek, who joined the company during his own studies at FAMU, approach production as a collaborative process shaped by trust, curiosity, and a shared commitment to ethical practice.

The company’s philosophy, inspired by the Zen concept of maintaining a “beginner’s mind,” encourages directors to explore new creative territories without falling into habitual methods.

Beginner’s Mind places as much emphasis on how films are made as what they ultimately become. Environmental sustainability is a central principle that shapes decisions from preproduction through post-, influencing the selection of collaborators, suppliers, travel logistics, and even shooting methodology. The company is one of the founding members of the Czech Platform for a Sustainable Audiovisual Industry and strives to ensure an antidiscriminatory, respectful working environment on all its projects.

Elevating new voices

Beginner’s Mind launched publicly with The Other Side of Summer (2025), the sophomore feature by Vojtěch Strakatý, which premiered in Karlovy Vary’s Proxima Competition. A Czech-Croatian coming-of-age mystery, the film follows two teenage girls drifting through a languid summer at a lakeside cottage, until a chance encounter with a stranger leads them to a pool on a nearby island said to transport its visitors anywhere in the world. Strakatý’s film intertwines adolescent longing with the allure of escape, merging naturalistic textures with a lightly fantastic tone.

This spirit continues in The Champion, the new feature by Bohdan Karásek, now in postproduction. The film focuses on a successful doctor whose long-desired pregnancy is interrupted by the sudden reappearance of her former husband, a man who could never have children and whose emotional presence continues to unsettle her carefully built life. Rather than leaning into melodramatic confrontation, Karásek creates a layered meditation on the emotional residue of past relationships, professional pressure, and female identity. His restrained observational style aligns naturally with the company’s preference for character-anchored narratives and subtle, auteur filmmaking.

The Champion is in the final stages of postproduction, with a completed master expected by the start of 2026. It was showcased in the Works in Progress selection at the Cottbus Film Festival, where the team also met with prospective sales partners. Produced as a Czech majority project in partnership with Magiclab and Czech Television, and supported by the Czech Audiovisual Fund, the Liberec Region, and Film Foundation, the film is positioned for a 2026 festival premiere, followed by a domestic release through Artcam, which will serve as its dedicated Czech distributor.

The development slate of Beginner’s Mind suggests an even broader thematic scope to come. Lukeš and Čadek are currently at work on Vojtěch Strakatý’s third feature, No Salvation Coming, a heist drama rooted in generational economic anxiety. The story follows a group of young adults who in spite of their education, qualifications, and efforts to make a living are pushed to the financial breaking point and decide to rob the luxury villa where one of them works as a cleaner. While promising all the tension of a crime story, the project grows from the same impulse that shaped Strakatý’s sophomore feature: a focus on the emotional fault lines in youth culture and the systemic pressures that shape contemporary adulthood.

The project is moving through development, having had industry exposure at several coproduction forums, most recently Tallinn, where it won the Marché du Film award. The company is positioning No Salvation Coming as a multi-territory European coproduction, and while discussions are ongoing with several potential partners, none has yet made a formal commitment. If funding proceeds as planned, principal photography is tentatively scheduled for autumn 2027 or spring 2028, aligning the project for a late-2028 or 2029 festival premiere.

Meanwhile another emerging filmmaker, Albert Hospodářský—who Lukeš first collaborated with on Brutal Heat (2023), his award-winning debut—returns with Restless, a drama charting the emotional turbulence of Lola, a young woman struggling with a deep, unnameable sense of dissatisfaction in her rural marriage. Her attempt to reconnect with her husband culminates in a reckless escape to a Mediterranean island, where the story veers toward the surreal, culminating in a near-death experience that reframes her understanding of commitment and desire. Hospodářský here continues to refine his signature style of psychological intensity, sensorial storytelling, and understated social commentary.

Restless has been in active development for over two years and is now progressing into the financing and coproduction phase, having completed the Midpoint Feature Launch program, where its strengthened its international profile and the first partners emerged, including Alaska Films of Greece as a confirmed coproducer. Beginner’s Mind plans the film as a three-country European coproduction, with Croatia’s Electrica currently listed as the second intended partner. A teaser was shot in summer 2025 to support packaging and market visibility, and the project is included in the company’s MEDIA Mini Slate. Pending funding decisions in early 2026, principal photography is targeted for summer 2027, setting the film on course for a late-2028 or 2029 festival premiere.

Nonfiction that confronts systems and space

Parallel to its fiction output, Beginner’s Mind sustains a documentary slate, typically centered on political structures, civic participation, and environmental crisis. Urban Disobedience Toolkit (2025), directed by Vladimír Turner, encapsulates this approach. A longtime practitioner of public-space intervention, Turner shapes the film around a series of artistic direct actions, part performance, part protest, that invite urban residents to reclaim and reimagine their shared environment. The film’s hybrid structure mirrors its subject matter, weaving observational footage with performative elements to reveal how art can disrupt technocratic norms and inspire civic agency.

Following its domestic premiere in early 2025, Urban Disobedience Toolkit has built an organic international trajectory, supported less by aggressive sales strategy than by the project’s resonance in activist, academic, and artistic circles. The film has already secured distribution through the Canadian network Cinema Politica, securing it a spot on the global circuit dedicated to politically engaged nonfiction. The feature’s reception has also prompted Beginner’s Mind and Turner to explore an expansion of the concept into an international mini-series, leveraging the director’s long-standing connections with public-space artists across Europe.

A more institutional lens defines Between a Rock and a Hard Place, the new feature documentary by Greta Stocklassa, currently in development. The project examines the Czech Republic’s contentious process of selecting a site for the underground storage of nuclear waste, situating the debate within broader European energy policy. Stocklassa follows civil servants from the State Radioactive Waste Repository Authority, local communities, and political actors, mapping the tensions between transparency, public mistrust, populism, and environmental urgency. Supported through the EU’s National Recovery Plan, the film positions nuclear waste management as a prism through which to understand deeper societal fractures, decision-making opacity, institutional skepticism, and competing visions for the country’s ecological future.

While still at the research and access-building stage, the film has attracted interest from industry platforms due to Stocklassa’s track record and the project’s cross-border relevance, making it a strong candidate for upcoming documentary development labs and market showcases. As it moves toward assembling financing, the team is preparing the groundwork for international coproduction, with the aim of aligning the film with a distribution strategy that allows it to reach both policy-focused documentary circuits and higher-profile festival environments.

Beyond borders, beyond features

Beyond its majority Czech productions, Beginner’s Mind is also strengthening its international footprint through a pair of minority coproductions that reflect the company’s growing integration into the European production ecosystem. The first, History of Illness, marks the feature debut of Croatian director David Gasco and is produced by Zagreb-based Electrica. A tightly structured absurdist hospital comedy with tonal affinities to Roy Andersson, the project has gained momentum through festival development awards in Karlovy Vary and selections at MIDPOINT and Torino ScriptLab. The project netted the Eurimages Co-Production Development Award at TorinoFilmab. Croatia has already secured primary production funding, with a teaser scheduled to shoot in early 2026. The Czech contribution is expected to focus on key creative roles, including sound and music, as the team pursues minority support from the Czech Audiovisual Fund.

The second project, Hardsub, is the debut by Ukrainian filmmaker Novus Ignatov, produced across Ukraine, Germany, Poland, and the Czech Republic. Set against the backdrop of the early days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the film follows a culturally displaced translator of Azerbaijani origin. It is financed through a combination of Ukrainian resources and international funds, including schemes supporting filmmakers from conflict-affected regions. The project has been through several workshops and markets, including Torino Feature Lab 2024. Both History of Illness and Hardsub are slated for late-2026 production.

Looking ahead, Beginner’s Mind is entering a phase of diversification, shaped as much by market realities as by its evolving ambitions. With a growing network of European partners, the company is moving beyond microbudget debuts toward fully financed, multicountry coproductions designed to compete internationally and sustain long-term artistic growth. At the same time, shifting funding structures and audience habits are prompting an expansion into episodic and hybrid formats, including early explorations of docuseries, fiction series, and even interactive or video game–based storytelling.

Rather than building a service arm or pursuing high-volume commercial production, Lukeš aims to maintain the company as a compact, agile outfit with a strong authorial identity, capable of sustaining long-term creative and financial stability. As part of this evolution, he plans to expand the core team by bringing in a third producer to balance the company’s workload, strengthen its internal dynamics, and support a trajectory of sustainable growth for the years ahead.