Czech film-maker Pepa Lubojacki originally set out to make a film about pigeons. What fascinated the 39-year-old director was that the grey birds are clearly beautiful and highly intelligent creatures, yet human cruelty towards them is socially acceptable in the way it isn\u2019t towards, say, crows or magpies. \u201cYou can spot kids kicking and chasing pigeons while their parents cheerfully look on,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
The moral blind spot reminded her of the way that people looked at homeless people like her older brother and her cousins. \u201cThe public has learned to avert their eyes,\u201d she says. \u201cMy cousin was declined care seven times with open wounds in the hospital, and finally, they had to amputate both of his legs.\u201d<\/p>\n
The birds stayed in the title of her first documentary, one of the most widely discussed and critically lauded films to be released in Czechia<\/a> in recent years. To make If Pigeons Turned to Gold, Lubojacki spent five years chronicling the lives of four family members on the streets of Prague. In search of answers for why her relatives ended up with addictions and without roofs over their heads, the film wades deep into intergenerational trauma: domestic abuse and the deaths of her biological father and stepfather.<\/p>\n Shot mostly on iPhone, the film is narrated by a meme-like talking pigeon and animated family photos with AI voiceovers, including manipulated child portraits of Pepa and her brother. They provide flashbacks to their 90s childhood in prefab estates where \u201cyou could get all the drugs your heart desired\u201d, as one of the opening scenes tells us.<\/p>\n Innovative \u2026 the film uses AI to voiceover Pepa and her brother as children. Photograph: Wanda Kapr\u00e1lov\u00e1\/Claw Films<\/p>\n The central focus is Lubojacki\u2019s ever-evasive brother David, and the documentary includes peaceful moments of nostalgic bonding over a rap song, but also documents vicious cycles of alcohol withdrawal and relapse, as Lubojacki struggles to nurture adult David to functionality. It\u2019s an especially pressing issue in Czechia, the home of the world\u2019s most popular beer style in the pilsner, where taxation of alcoholic drinks is traditionally low and the rate of alcohol consumption one of the highest in the world<\/a>. (To make things worse, Prague has some of the lowest rates of affordable housing in the European Union<\/a>.)<\/p>\n \u201cI was angry because of the systemic injustice,\u201d Lubojacki says. \u201cPolice beat up my brother several times, but caring professions can cause violence too, when medical personnel refuse to treat unhoused persons like him because of their history of addiction.\u201d She used to look up to David \u2013 a local skater hero who listened to hip-hop, and knew all the cool stuff \u2013 and the mission of her film is audiences can \u201csee my brother how I see him and how beautiful he is, that addiction is not only caused by a weak will\u201d.<\/p>\n Young skater hero \u2026 Pepa Lubojacki\u2019s brother David. Photograph: Claw Films<\/p>\n If Pigeons Turned to Gold unfolds through diary entries, interspersed with footage of herself on the psychiatric ward where she was hospitalised during the making of the film and video-art sequences of her sinking deep in water. Some of the entries read like poetry: \u201cI\u2019m just a little strawberry seed in the sea, a drowned strawberry seed, in an attempt to change something that is not up to me to change.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWritten text is my primary language and is closer to my heart,\u201d reveals Lubojacki, who also has ambitions as a writer. She was inspired by Ottessa Moshfegh, who writes \u201csimply, almost mechanically, as if without emotions, and observes brutal things without pathos\u201d, and Melissa Broder\u2019s \u201cloose narrative of free writing\u201d on addiction.<\/p>\n The central question the 110-minute film circles around is whether you can grieve someone who hasn\u2019t died yet. According to one recent study<\/a>, people sleeping rough on the streets die 16 years earlier than the rest of the population. \u201cI believe we live in an epidemic of addiction,\u201d Lubojacki says. But speaking about this epidemic without shame is difficult: \u201cWhen I grew up, I felt isolated, as if I was the only one who had this problem \u2013 I couldn\u2019t speak about it with anyone, as I was so ashamed.\u201d<\/p>\n Pepa Lubojacki with the Berlinale documentary award for If Pigeons Turned to Gold. Photograph: Imago\/Alamy Stock Photo\/Alamy Live News.<\/p>\n