In this episode of Stream Close Up, we continue our coverage of the 59th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival with Czech writer and director Šimon Holý.
Šimon joins us to discuss his new film Chica Checa, which had its world premiere in the festival’s main competition. The film follows a woman working in a small-town post office whose dying mother has one final wish: to see a beloved Czech pop icon perform. To make that happen, she calls her son home from France, only to discover that the life he has built for himself is very different from the one she imagined.
What begins as a mission to fulfill a grandmother’s last wish becomes something warmer and more surprising: a mother and son story about rediscovery, drag performance, small-town attitudes, and the possibility of starting again later in life.
Šimon talks about the dream that sparked the idea, the personal connections behind the story, and why he sees the film as both humanistic and quietly political in the current Czech context.
We also discuss working with Paula Tomašovová, casting the mother-son relationship, finding humor without falling into cliché, and why Chica Checa is, in Šimon’s words, almost like an eighties buddy movie.
Topics include:
Šimon Holý’s return to Karlovy Vary
The world premiere of Chica Checa
Drag performance and Czech pop culture
Mother-son relationships on screen
Coming out, family, and the pain of not being known
Casting Paula Tomašovová and Jan Cina
Camp, humor, and avoiding cliché
The political context of contemporary Czech cinema
Hope, change, and starting over after fifty
Trailer: Chica Cheka
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