Petr Vaclav’s We Are Never Alone, shown at the Berlinale Forum, won the Tagesspiegel Readers’ Jury Award, followed by invitations to compete in the goEast festival in Wiesbaden, as well as the Brussels Film Festival, and it was selected for the Contemporary World Cinema section at Toronto.

I, Olga Hepnarova, the impressive debut by Tomáš Weinreb and Petr Kazda based on true events, opened the Berlinale Panorama this year. Straight from Berlin, it went on a journey around the world. To date, it has appeared at 22 festivals, including the competition section at the festivals in Sofia, Guadalajara, and Hong Kong. In Vilnius, the film won the award for Best Film. It also screened at Linz Crossing Europe, Freiburg LGBT, Montreal Fantasia, Bogota IndieBo, the Melbourne IFF, and Oslo Fusion.

I, Olga Hepnarova is a coproduction between the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, and France. Besides the coproducing countries, it has so far been sold to the US, UK, Brazil, and Taiwan.

Director-producer Petr Oukropec’s family film In Your Dreams!, which examines Prague’s parkour community, competed in the Berlinale Generation 14-plus section and went on to appear at numerous European festivals dedicated to young audiences, including BUFF Malmö, Stockholm IFF Junior, Stockholm International Film Festival Junior, the Kristiansand International Children’s Film Festival in Norway, and the Polish Kinoklub–Film Festival for Children and Youth. The film also screened at the Karlovy Vary IFF, the Sofia IFF, Dream Fest in Romania, the Sarajevo Film Festival, the Taormina Film Festival, and the Shanghai International Film Festival.

The multinational coproduction Family Film, by talented Prague-based Slovenian director Olmo Omerzu, is one of the most critically acclaimed films this year. After its international premiere in San Sebastian’s New Directors section in 2015, Family Film received the Best Artistic Contribution Award in Tokyo. Following that, it screened at numerous European festivals, including Torino, Vilnius, and Transylvania, as well as overseas, in Seattle, Taipei, Melbourne, and the New Zealand IFF.

Slávek Horák’s Home Care, another festival champion and last year’s Czech nominee for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards, has participated at more than 20 film festivals all over the world. The film’s remarkable lead, Alena Mihulová, was awarded the Best Actress Award at Karlovy Vary, Palm Springs, and the Neiße IFF. At the Phoenix Film Festival, Home Care was named World Cinema Best Picture; other awards have come from Mannheim, Bergamo, Arras, and Valladolid. Variety recommended director Horák as one of Ten Directors to Watch.

Helena Třeštíková, one of the Czech Republic’s leading documentary filmmakers, scored on the international festival scene once again, with her latest observational portrait, Mallory. Last year, the film won Best Documentary Award at Karlovy Vary and a Special Mention in the Best European TV Documentary category at Prix Europa. This year so far, Mallory has screened at 15 more festivals, including DocPoint in Helsinki, the Göteborg Film Festival, Magnificent 7, ZagrebDox, the Luxembourg City Film Festival (where it won Best Documentary), the Tempo Documentary Festival in Sweden, the Hong Kong International Film Festival, Hot Docs in Canada, the Human Rights Arts and Film Festival in Australia, and the Open City Documentary Festival in the UK.

Another impressive documentary is Under the Sun, by Vitaly Mansky, which reveals the power of Communist propaganda over a family in North Korea. Mansky’s fascinating nonfiction film was the center of attention at numerous European and US festivals this year, including Documenta Madrid, the Vilnius IFF, the Wisconsin IFF, the San Francisco IFF, Hot Docs, and the Seattle IFF.

Several foreign films with minority Czech coproduction scored as well. La Danseuse by Stéphanie Di Giusto and Personal Shopper by Olivier Assayas, both coproduced by Sirena Film, were part of the official selection in Cannes this year and continue their festival tour.

Short films also successfully debuted at festivals: Peacock, by Ondřej Hudeček, which premiered internationally at Toronto in 2015, took home the Short Film Special Jury Award for Best Direction from Sundance this year. It also appeared as part of the Future Frames program at KVIFF 2015, the NewFest LGBT festival in NYC, and in June 2016 it received two awards at Palm Springs ShortFest. The short animation Happy End, Jan Saska’s graduation film, made it to the 2016 Cannes Quinzaine, the Annecy IAFF, and the Guanajuato IFF (where it won one of the main awards), and was selected for the Ottawa IAFF. Last but not least, Superbia, an explosive animation film by Hungarian director Luca Tóth, coproduced by the Czech company MAUR Film, premiered in Critics’ Week at Cannes.