The movie I’m Not Everything I Want to Be will fight for an Oscar for the Czech Republic

Monday, 11th August, 2025

In Prague, 11^th Aug 2025 – The Czech Film and Television Academy (CFTA) has just announced the candidate for an Oscar representing the Czech Republic in the category International Feature Film. The academics have decided by vote to send the documentary feature by Klára Tasovská I’m Not Everything I Want to Be to fight for the prestigious 98^th annual award of the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). Formally daring documentary about identity, freedom and inner defiance follows the life of a photographer called Libuše Jarcovjáková – a distinctive artist who regardless of the times and her surroundings decided to be herself. The original movie was created from her private diaries and thousands of analogue photographs and depicts the underground movement in the 80s in Czechoslovakia as well as her dramatic escape to West Berlin and exclusive photo shooting for the fashion icons in Tokyo. Last year the film was presented in world premiere at the Berlinale film festival and this year it was awarded the Czech Lion for the best documentary feature.

The ceremonial gala evening where the 98^th annual awards of the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will be presented will take place on 15^th March 2026. The shortlisted selection of 15 international films will be announced on 16^th December this year and the announcement of the nominations will follow on 22^nd January 2026.

This year the statutes for the selection of the candidate for an Oscar award representing the Czech Republic have been changed. The news is that the voting took place in two rounds. In the first round the committee of the CFTA presidium selected three films from those that had been submitted for this occasion by their producers. In particular the committee chose Broken Voices, Caravan and I’m not Everything I Want to Be. The second round took place from 8^th July to 8^th August and all the members of CFTA fulfilling the AMPAS conditions could vote about the final candidate. A total of 194 academics voted. The CFTA statutes are available here.

Last year the academics selected as the candidate of the Czech Republic for the Oscar the film by Jiří Mádl called Waves and the movie managed to get shortlisted. So far only two Czechoslovak and one Czech film have managed to obtain the iconic golden statuette award of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences: The Shop on Main Street (1965) by Ján Kádár and Elmar Klos, two years later the film Closely Watched Trains by Jiří Menzel and Kolya (1996) by Jan Svěrák. Six more films have managed to get among the nominees: The Loves of a Blond (1966) and The Firemen’s Ball (1968) by Miloš Forman, My Sweet Little Village (1986) by Jiří Menzel, The Elementary School (1991) by Jan Svěrák, Divided We Fall (2000) by Jan Hřebejk and the last time Želary (2003) by Ondřej Trojan. Shortlisted for the Oscar was in 2019 the film by Václav Marhoul The Painted Bird and two years later the movie by Agnieszka Holland called Charlatan.