An absorbing and compassionate portrait of resilience, determination and skill, Eliška Cílková Andršová’s Up Again (Znovu vstaň) celebrates the ‘never give up’ spirit of young figure skater Barbora Vránková as she attempts to transition from young Czech skating star to making it in the big leagues of world championships. The film is selected for the festival’s Czech Joy competition.
The film opens just as sixteen-year-old Barbora Vránková has just become the Czech figure skating champion and is about to enter the most important years of her young life. In a message to skating coach Angelina Turenko she talks about how she started skating aged four and how she wants to join Turenko’s international skating club in Italy. As she says: “Sometimes I fall, but I say to myself ‘up again!’.”
With the support of her parents and little sister Thea (plus her small dog Lucky), she heads to Italy to train and meets her fellow skaters who are told to help and encourage her as they prepare for the European championships. She is told her routine will have to be less ‘girly’ and more professional, but she has issues with attempting certain moves, and especially one of the very difficult the triple jumps.
She is close to tears as she falls, and the coaches tell her she has much to do for championships. “I can’t do it’ she confides to a fellow skater, and eventually withdraws from the team due to illness. She is filmed back with her parents where her days are filled with online lessons, training and physiotherapy sessions to develop her stance, balance and physique.
With the club set to move to Milan, she is not sure she wants to remain, and ends up being trained by 10-time Czech national figure skating champion, and winner of the 2008 European Figure Skating Championships, Tomáš Verner over in the US. As she turns 17, the next stage of her skating adventure begins, with Verner a supportive and charismatic coach, but also determined that she must develop a full repertoire of skating skills…she must use “the full arsenal” he tells her.
At the 2024 European Figure Skating Championships she skates to Nicole Kidman singing ‘One Day I’ll Fly Away’ (from Moulin Rouge) with the film using television footage rather than crew cameras, but when she returns to Tomas it is clear things have gone poorly. She is placed 24th and is in tears as she watches other skaters compete. She later watches the footage by herself, listening to the pundits, and the next morning her mother simply asks, “is it worth it?” The film closes with her blowing out candles on her 18th birthday, still skating, still practising and still resilient…
Director Cílková Andršová (also editor and composer) does an impressive job of inserting herself seamlessly into these pivotal years in Barbora Vránková’s development as both a skater and a young woman. We get less of her as a person (she is close to family, loves her dog and is genuinely sweet-natured) then we do as a skater, but Andršová makes great use of sound design to capture the intensity of training, with the scraping of the blades on ice playing counterpoint to the shouting coaches and the musical intensity of the indoor skating arenas.
It is not a simplistic documentary about a young star achieving great success, but rather an immersive and gently compassionate film that dwells on the sacrifices and determination needed to make even the slightest inroad into top level sport.
Czech Republic, 2026, 80mins
Dir: Eliška Cílková Andršová
Production: Nutprodukce, HBO Max, FAMU
Producers: Lukáš Kokeš
Co-Producers: Hanka Kastelicová, Tereza Bóna Keilová, Lenka Medová, Tomáš Šimon
Cinematography: Kryštof Hlůže, Tomáš Frkal
Editor/Music: Eliška Cílková Andršová
With: Barbora Vránková, Thea Vránková, Ivana Vránková, Miroslav Vránková, Tomáš Verner, Gabriele Frangipani, Angelina Turenko
