Czech Republic Picks Berlin-Winning Documentary 'If Pigeons Turned to Gold' for Oscar 2027 Submission
The Czech Republic has chosen Pepa Ljubojacki's documentary If Pigeons Turned to Gold as its submission for the best international feature film category at the 2027 Oscars, the Czech Film and Television Academy (CFTA) announced on 19 August 2026 (The Hollywood Reporter).
The film is an intimate, five-year chronicle of Ljubojacki's brother and two cousins, whose addictions erode their relationships, homes, and sense of safety (The Hollywood Reporter). The Berlin International Film Festival's official programme identifies the brother as David, an alcoholic living on the streets (Berlinale). The Sydney Film Festival frames the documentary more broadly as a portrait of a family confronting intergenerational addiction (Sydney Film Festival).
Visually, the film leans into a do-it-yourself aesthetic — diary shots, stylised memories, live photographs, and graphic collages interlink to build its narrative (The Hollywood Reporter). It was presented at the Ji.hlava New Visions Forum in 2023, an industry platform for documentary projects in development (Ji.hlava IDFF).
If Pigeons Turned to Gold had its world premiere in February 2026 at the Berlin International Film Festival, where it won the award for best documentary feature and the independent Caligari prize (The Hollywood Reporter). The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival lists the film as a Czech Republic–Slovak Republic co-production in its 2026 Special Screenings programme (KVIFF). International sales are handled by Split Screen, a company based in Croatia (The Hollywood Reporter).
Czech audiences will be able to see the film in cinemas at the end of September 2026 (The Hollywood Reporter). The international Oscar shortlist of 15 films will be published on 15 December 2026, with the five nominees unveiled on 21 January 2027 (The Hollywood Reporter).
The Czech Republic carries a weighty Oscar history. Three Czechoslovak or Czech films have won the international feature award: The Shop on Main Street (1965), Closely Watched Trains (1967), and Kolya (1996) (The Hollywood Reporter). Last cycle's Czech submission was Klára Tasovská's I'm Not Everything I Want to Be (The Hollywood Reporter).
What makes this pick stand out is the format. Documentaries are rarely selected as a country's international feature entry, which tends to favour narrative fiction. That a festival-winning, deeply personal nonfiction film is now carrying the Czech flag into the Oscar race gives it a distinctive profile among the submissions that will be filed before the Academy's October deadline.
