Earlier this summer, media giant Warner Bros Discovery announced another corporate restructuring but, says Czech-based Hanka Kastelicová VP, Documentaries HBO, the shifts at the parent company haven’t affected activities on the ground when it comes to commissioning and supporting new films in Eastern Europe.
“In our slate, there are not big changes,” Kastelicová says as she and her colleagues, who include producer Tereza Bóna Keilová, look for projects for 2026 and 2027.
Kastelicová oversees development and production of HBO documentaries in Central and Eastern Europe. Several of the titles she has supported look set to premiere at the key autumn documentary festivals. Among them is Love Exposed, HBO’s first collaboration with leading Czech documentary director and producer Filip Remunda (behind the 2004 hit Czech Dream).
Love Exposed is about an artistic family trying to resolve long buried tensions and difficulties. It is being made through Hypermarket Film and co-produced by Kerekesfilm (Slovakia) and HBO (which has already been involved in the project for six years and provided around 30% of the budget). The project was pitched at IDFA Forum in 2022 and is backed by Eurimages.
Another film that will be ready soon is Fragment Of Belonging (previously known as People In My House) by Dutch-based Croatian filmmaker, Tatjana Bozic. “It’s about all these generations of people from ex-Yugoslavia who left and are now living in the exile,” Kastelicová explains. “It’s a story about how migrants in different European countries live and cope, and try to find their place in western society.” The doc will launch on HBO Max in the autumn of 2026.
As these films surface, HBO is coming off what has already been a successful year. Titles like Nasty, about temperamental Romanian tennis star Ilie Nastase; Emma and Eddie: A Working Couple, about a webcam couple who get into producing adult content; and Kix, about a Budapest boy’s troubled childhood, have all achieved strong viewing figures on the platform. There has also been an Emmy for the Polish classical music doc Pianoforte.
As for new projects, hopes are now high for documentary maker and journalist Olivér Márk Tóth’s What Would Mom Say, about a young Hungarian rapper who has – in the three years that Tóth and his team have been following him – already become a major star. Marcell Szirmai was an unknown kid from a small village but under his stage name, Pogány Induló, he now has a huge following.
“Luck is an important element in documentary making,” Kastelicová (who spotted the project being pitched at the Verzió International Human Rights Film Festival) says of how Tóth stumbled on his protagonist and then filmed his remarkable ascent. She adds, though, that any good documentary maker always has “a feeling of what might be a story.”
Made through SpeakEasy and 70% funded by HBO, What Would Mom Say is produced by László Józsa who worked on an earlier doc Ultras, about ultra-marathon runners, with HBO. It has been made as a four-part series but now the filmmakers are spinning off a feature film version which is also being submitted to the autumn festivals. The series is soon to be broadcast, an exact date yet to be confirmed. When the trailer was announced, it had more than 1.5mn views, a sure sign of the rapper’s huge and growing following in eastern Europe.
Kastelicová’s colleague Keilová has been at the Sarajevo Film Festival this week. HBO continues to sponsor an award in Sarajevo’s CineLink Rough Cut Boutique and has now launched a significant new award of €30 000 cash, as well as a license across 15 HBO territories in Central and Southeast Europe, in CineLink’s Work In Progress section.
The team has a tried and tested policy for its documentaries. They’re given the chance to premiere at festivals and are also allowed a theatrical window. “We have a short cinema release – and we do one campaign for both the cinema release and our release,” Kastelicová explains.
She and Keilová, remain fiercely supportive of their filmmakers. “In some countries, having cinema distribution is a condition for receiving support from the film funds,” Keilová points out there are also practical financial reasons for making sure that docs are seen on the big screen.
HBO Max has a huge global footprint. It’s available in around 70 languages and the service continues to open in ever more territories. “One thing that never changes is that HBO is a synonym for quality,” Kastelicová insists that the company’s rapid growth hasn’t compromised standards.
Others within the documentary community have often complained in recent years about commissioners’ obsession with true crime and celebrity. Kastelicová takes a more nuanced view of the trend.
“We have a certain liberty but we are obliged more and more to have high numbers with audiences,” she reflects, pointing out that HBO’s Hungarian rap doc What Would Mom Say could be defined as a celebrity-driven story. “Nevertheless, even celebrity projects can be deep and meaningful and portray certain problems in society…we are also preparing ‘true crime’ in several countries – but we are trying for premium work.”
One of the new true crime films is producer Monica Lazurean-Gorgan’s project about the murder of Mihaela Runceanu, a famous Romanian singer, just before the fall of Communism.
For obvious reasons, HBO Max has become a natural partner for many of the best documentary filmmakers in eastern Europe. “After all these years we have been working in our region, we have very good relations with the documentary community – so people know we are searching for excellent projects and that we need to be on board at an early stage.”
The company isn’t afraid to support LBQT work or outspoken political documentaries that may fall foul of censors and funders in some parts of Eastern Europe. For instance, HBO is getting behind How To Win A Political Debate (working title), a new four-part series from the brilliant Serbian director, Mila Turajlić; and Volia Chajkouskaya’s Not Made For Politics (which is sold by Cinephil), about a group of Belarusian women who are challenging the country’s 30-year dictatorship.
“In some countries, it is difficult for people to talk openly about politics. Even in some countries very near us, we feel this responsibility that it’s important to talk about these stories. We are witnessing in our countries how quickly people are forgetting about then time of communism and what life was like back then.”
One new development is that HBO Max has been available in Ukraine since late June – and the hope now is that the streamer will now find and support some of the best new Ukrainian docs.
Kastelicová and Keilová are also continually on the road, meeting filmmakers, attending forums and pitching events. “We keep on searching,” Kastelicová says of the never-ending quest for documentary excellence.
