A drag queen opens up to her small-town mother, but all hell doesn’t break loose in Šimon Holý’s heartfelt and enjoyable film, “Czech Girl.” The film screens Saturday in the Karlovy Vary Film Festival’s Crystal Globe competition.

Holý, who wrote, directed and scored the film, spent “seven or eight years” with “Czech Girl,” developing the project before and while working on his debut feature, “Mirrors in the Dark.”

“So I took it as a challenge, and one day I had a dream where I basically watched most of the movie, woke up, and wrote it in my journal,” he says. “I thought, this is a great idea, and then I realized what the subconscious was doing, because it told me the story of my mother, that in some ways I was inspired by my mother and the life I spent before in my village, as well as what is happening with society now.”

“Czech Girl” centers on widow Zdena, who lives a quiet life in a small Czech town, working as a postman and spending time with her hospitalized and bedridden mother. He socializes with his neighbors but denies his loneliness. She asks her son Lukáś, who lives in Paris, to visit his grandmother before she dies. During her visit, Grandma repeatedly asks for a famous singer to come perform for her. Lukáś has been hiding from his mother that he makes a living as a drag queen called Czech Girl and that he is gay, for fear of her reaction. But because of his grandmother’s last wish, he dresses up like the singer and performs at the hospital. What follows is a beautiful story about the bond between mother and child. Zdena expands her horizons beyond the small town and maybe even finds new happiness.

Holý and producer Alžběta Janáčková wanted to address homophobia, but not in a dark and depressing way. “We felt there was a way to say something important in a very kind way,” he says. “In a warmer way that can speak to more generations in a friendlier way and open up the discussion without pushing our agenda hard and aggressively. And that’s what’s at the heart of the story.”

The Czech Republic and many countries in Europe and the United States are seeing a resurgence of right-wing oppression of LGBTQ+ communities. Holý says that when he started developing “Czech Girl,” he and his producer didn’t think it was a political film.

But when they were editing the film, “we realized that this film is actually very political.” Karlovy Vary Film Festival winner Karel Och even told them: “‘This is a very political film.'” He adds: “And with what’s happening in the Czech Republic (because I’m also a music programmer for the Prague Pride Festival, I see what’s happening with queer rights in the region) and I realized, wow, this movie really addresses something that’s happening right now, it’s very political. So I think it’s interesting to see that we thought it was difficult for queers.” “People did eight years ago, but now it’s more difficult, and we have Trump, and we also have right-wing politicians in our government, who are trying to turn our public television into state television.”

The filmmaker says people are fighting against the proposal to change Czech Television’s funding, which reduces budgets to 2008 levels. But he also says the bigger picture is the threat to Czech Television’s editorial independence, which has sparked many protests and demonstrations.

“What it means is that they will harm the entire culture as a whole, because Czech Television is now the second largest financier of the Czech audiovisual industry, so they are actively fighting against Czech cinema together with it and the Czech audiovisual industry,” he says.

It is in this current context that “Czech Girl” will seek distribution. Pluto Film is handling sales for Silk Film’s production, with Arina Film, French Connection and the embattled Czech Television as co-producers.

The heart and soul of the film is Zdena, played by an expressive Pavla Tomicová. Interestingly, Holý fought against her casting. He had already worked with her on a film and wanted someone new for the role. But she never let go and Holý reluctantly relented and invited her to an impromptu reading with Jan Cina, who plays Lukáś.

“And something magical was happening, because Jan and Pavla had never acted together before. They didn’t really know each other, and they met, and in 10 seconds it was clear ‘that they were the right people for those roles.’ Pavla just smiled. She said, ‘I told you, I knew it.'”

Holý says that “she really knew what the story was about and brought this layer of really deep knowledge to the situation, even though she doesn’t have a gay son, she was thinking about her own children, she was thinking about what it means to be a mother.

“She always said that for me this is not a story about coming out or being queer, it’s more about being different and being different and doing other things than other people want me to do, and also about the fear of not being a good mother.”

He had a vision for the film: “I wanted to build this film as an antithesis of the social realism of the Czech films of the late ’90s and early ’00s, because they always show villages in a very specific and depressive way, and we also see it now at festivals, whenever there is a film about Czech villages, it is always very depressive, very blue, very cold, and that’s why our film is very white, vibrant, very yellow. But I also told Paval that I “I really don’t want to see this European art house, without facial reactions. I told her to be expressive, to be emotional, because it’s also about drag.”

Cina had to embrace a new side of himself and Czech Girl.

Holý has been following Cina’s career for years and always wanted him for the film. But Cina was a little reluctant at first “because I felt like just because I’m gay, and just because I did this TV show where I dressed up as Madonna, I think I’m being typecast. I said, ‘Listen, I don’t think that’s the case, I don’t think there’s ever a drag movie in the Czech Republic, and there are never really gay characters in Czech movies, so I don’t think it’s so much about typecasting as it is about me supporting your skills and crafts. I think you’re capable of doing it.’ because I saw that you are capable of doing it.’

“He said yes, and he worked with a choreographer and Just Karen, the drag queen, and they did a dance and drag workshop, where he really got into it, and he discovered that he really loves it, and now he’s created his own drag character called The Girl. He discovered that there’s something really interesting for him, because as an actor, you’re always the one trying to fulfill someone’s wishes and role, but here he’s the one creating the character.”