The Institute of Documentary Film (IDF) has announced the nine projects selected for the Czech-based first edition of its new training initiative, Docs Beyond: Audience, Impact & AI. Throughout autumn 2026, the selected teams will work with experienced international professionals to develop either an impact campaign or an audience design & outreach strategy for their films.
Docs Beyond: Audience, Impact & AI is a professional training programme for documentary producers, directors, screenwriters, distributors and other film professionals working in the Czech Republic. “It helps teams answer questions that can shape the future of a film. Who is it for? Which communities and partners are connected to its subject? How can it reach them, and what can it realistically achieve once it meets the public?” the Institute writes.
Five teams will join the Impact Producing module led by Khadidja Benouataf. Four will take part in the Audience Design & Outreach module led by Paul Rieth. All nine teams will then work with Dominic Lees to explore how generative AI can support documentary work, where it falls short and what creative and ethical questions it raises.
The programme runs from 6 October to 11 December 2026 and combines two online blocks with a five-day residential workshop in Prague.
IMPACT PRODUCING SELECTIONS
- Still here (dir. Linda Kallistová Jablonská, prod. Alice Tabery – CINEPOINT). Synopsis: As their mother’s cancer progresses, two teenage sisters find themselves growing up faster than expected. Through care, humour, and the extraordinary bond between the three of them, they learn how to live with the certainty of loss. Portrait of Water (dir. Ondřej Sovík, prod. Linda Jandejsková – Young Water Films). Synopsis: A Czech composer leaves his studio to compose symphonic poems about water, discovering across four seasons how direct experience of a changing landscape can transform observation into a meaningful artistic response to the environmental challenges of our time.
- Bedřiška is alive! (working title) (dir. Kryštof Zvolánek, prod. Jan Čadek, Ondřej Lukeš – Beginner’s Mind). Synopsis: When the city brands their neighbourhood an “investment opportunity” and sends in the excavators, the last residents of Bedřiška fight to prove that the value of a home can’t be measured in the price of land.
- Endless Ride (dir. Johan Kolínský, prod. Karel Chvojka – moloko film). Synopsis: Their approach to life is inspiring, and their infectious humour breaks down barriers between people with and without disabilities. It’s contagious.
- Back into the Game (working title) (dir. Jindřich Andrš, Eliška Andršová Cílková, prod. Jindřich Andrš – Gamma Pictures, co-prod. Czech Television, Studio Beep). Synopsis: Two men, twenty years apart, come out of the same treatment community and fly to Seoul with a football team of people in recovery. On the pitch they have to find out who they are without the drug.
AUDIENCE DESIGN & OUTREACH SELECTIONS
- JENUFA (dir. Tereza Tara, prod. Karolína Dvorská Fránková – Films & Chips). Synopsis: In her bold take on Janáček’s Jenůfa, Europe’s youngest opera director brings women who survived postpartum depression onto the stage. Their testimonies challenge the myth of happy motherhood and provoke a fierce response.
- Ordinary Pond (working title) (dir. Jan Hošek, Prokop Pithart, prod. Radim Procházka, Žofie Strachotová – Kuli Film). Synopsis: He wants to save a pond. The pond has other plans. A new wildlife film from the authors of the popular Wild Prague®.
- My Other, Perfect Me (dir. Veronika Lišková, prod. Martina Netíková, Kristýna Michálek Květová – Cinémotif Films, co-prod. Anna Mach Rumanová – filmsomnia, Giedrė Žickytė – Moonmakers). Synopsis: Tereza, a successful actress and musician, struggles with bulimia hidden behind her public life. As her condition begins to threaten her voice and career, she embarks on a cinematic journey confronting her desire for perfection and searching for a path toward recovery.
- My Sister Anna (dir. Jakub Wagner, exec. prod. Lena Vlčková, prod. Jan Strejcovský – GPO Platform, co-prod. Serge Gordey – Temps Noir). Synopsis: A hybrid auto-fiction by Jakub Wagner. Through a cache of family letters, a brother reconstructs the life of his late sister, who left 1990s Prague as an au pair for Paris, only to later succumb to a stigmatized illness.
Docs Beyond: Audience, Impact & AI is organised by the Institute of Documentary Film in cooperation with the Audiovisual Producers’ Association. The programme is supported by the Czech Audiovisual Fund and the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic.
