{"id":3538,"date":"2026-07-04T06:05:54","date_gmt":"2026-07-04T06:05:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=3538"},"modified":"2026-07-04T06:05:54","modified_gmt":"2026-07-04T06:05:54","slug":"simon-holy-turns-drag-family-and-small-town-life-into-a-tender-political-statement-in-chica-checa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=3538","title":{"rendered":"\u0160imon Hol\u00fd Turns Drag, Family and Small-Town Life Into a Tender Political Statement in \u2018Chica Checa\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\tA drag queen comes out to his small-town mother but all hell doesn\u2019t break loose in \u0160imon Hol\u00fd\u2019s heartfelt and crowd-pleasing feature \u201cChica Checa.\u201d The film screens on Saturday in the Crystal Globe Competition at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival.<\/p>\n

Read more Celina Vikram Jaitly Returns to the Big Screen as Sister Nibedita, the Irish-Born Disciple of Swami Vivekananda (EXCLUSIVE)<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\tHol\u00fd, who wrote, directed and composed the music for the film, spent \u201cseven or eight years\u201d with \u201cChica Checa,\u201d developing the project before and while he was working on his debut feature, \u201cMirrors in the Dark.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSo I took it as a challenge, and one day I had a dream where I saw basically most of the film, and I woke up, and I wrote it in my diary,\u201d he says. \u201cI was like, this is a great idea, and then I realized what the subconsciousness was kind of doing, because it told me the story of my mom, that I was inspired by my mom in a way, and by my life that I spent in my village before, as well as what\u2019s happening with society now.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cChica Checa\u201d centers on widow Zdena, who leads a quiet life in a small Czech village, working as a mail carrier and spending time with her bed-ridden, hospitalized mother. She socializes with her neighbors but denies her loneliness. She asks her son, Luk\u00e1\u015b, who lives in Paris, to visit his grandmother before she dies. During his visit, granny repeatedly asks to have a famous singer come and perform for her. Luk\u00e1\u015b has been hiding the fact that he makes a living as a drag queen called Chica Checa (\u201cCzech Girl\u201d) and that he\u2019s gay from his mother, afraid of her reaction. But for his grandmother\u2019s dying wish, he dresses up like the singer and performs at the hospital. What follows is a lovely story about the bond between mother and son. Zdena expands her horizons beyond the little town and may even find new happiness.<\/p>\n

\n\tHol\u00fd and producer Al\u017eb\u011bta Jan\u00e1\u010dkov\u00e1 wanted to tackle homophobia but not in a dark, depressing way. \u201cWe felt like there is a way we can say something important in a very gentle,\u201d he says. \u201cIn a more warm way that can talk to more generations in a more friendly way, and open the discussion without pushing our agenda hard and aggressively. And that\u2019s what\u2019s in the center of the story.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCzech Republic and a lot countries across Europe and the U.S. are seeing a resurgence of right-wing oppression of the LGBTQ+ communities. Hol\u00fd says that when he started developing \u201cChica Checa,\u201d he and his producer didn\u2019t think it was a political film.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut when they were editing the film, \u201cwe realized that this film is actually very political.\u201d Karlovy Vary Film Festival topper Karel Och even told them, \u201c \u2018This is a very political film.\u2019\u201d He adds, \u201cAnd with what\u2019s happening in the Czech Republic \u2014 because I\u2019m also a music programmer of Prague Pride Festival, I see what\u2019s happening towards queer rights in the region \u2014 and I realized, wow, this film really is tackling something that is happening right now, is very political. So I think that that\u2019s kind of interesting to see that we thought it was hard for queer people eight years ago, but now it\u2019s harder, and we have Trump, and we have right-wing politicians in our government as well, who are trying to make our public television state television.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe filmmaker says that people are fighting against the proposed change in funding to Czech Television, which reduces budgets to 2008 levels. But he also says the bigger picture is the threat to Czech Television\u2019s editorial independence, which has sparked many protests and demonstrations.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhat it means is that they will definitely hurt the whole culture as a whole, because Czech Television is now the second-biggest financier of the Czech audio-visual industry, so it means that they are actively fighting the Czech cinema with this and Czech audio-visual industry,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

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\n\tIt\u2019s against this current backdrop that \u201cChica Checa\u201d will be looking for distribution. Pluto Film is handling sales of the Silk Film production, with Arina Film, the French Connection and the embattled Czech Television as co-producers.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe film\u2019s heart and soul is Zdena, played by an expressive Pavla Tomicov\u00e1. Interestingly, Hol\u00fd fought against her casting. He had already worked with her in a film, and wanted someone new for the role. But she never let go, and Hol\u00fd reluctantly relented, and had her in for an impromptu reading with Jan Cina, who plays Luk\u00e1\u015b.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAnd there was something magical happening, because Jan and Pavla never acted before together. They don\u2019t really know each other, and they met, and in 10 seconds it was clear \u201dthat they were the right people for those roles. Pavla was just smiling. She said, \u2018I told you, I knew.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHol\u00fd says she \u201creally knew what the story is about, and she brought this layer of really deep knowledge of the situation, even though she doesn\u2019t have a gay son, she was thinking about her own children, she was thinking about what it means to be a mother.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cShe was always saying that this is not a story about coming out or queerness for me, it\u2019s more about otherness and being othered and doing other things than other people want me to do, and also about fear of not being a good mother.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe had a vision for the film: \u201cI kind of wanted to build this film as an antithesis to social realism of late \u201890s and early 2000s Czech films, because they are always showing villages in a very specific kind of depressive way, and we also see it now at the festivals, whenever there is a Czech village film, it\u2019s always very depressive, very blue, very cold, and that\u2019s why our film is very white, vibrant, very yellow. But also I told Paval that I really don\u2019t want to see this Euro arthouse, no facial reactions style \u2014 I told her to be expressive, be emotional, because it\u2019s about drag as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCina had to embrace a new side of himself as well as Chica Checa.<\/p>\n

\n\tHol\u00fd has been following Cina\u2019s career for years, and always wanted him for the film. But Cina at first was a bit reluctant \u201cbecause he felt like just because I\u2019m gay, and just because I did this show in the television where I dressed up as Madonna, I think I\u2019m being typecast. I told him, \u2018Listen, I don\u2019t think this is the case, I think that there is no drag film in the Czech Republic ever, and there are no really gay characters in the Czech film ever, so I don\u2019t think this is about typecasting as much as my support of your skills and crafts. I think you are able to do it because I saw that you\u2019re able to do it.\u2019<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHe said OK, and worked with a choreographer and Just Karen, the drag queen, and they did this dancing and drag workshop, where he really got into it, and he found out that he actually loves it, and now he\u2019s created his own drag persona called La Chica. He found out that there is something really interesting for him, because as an actor, you are always the one who is trying to fulfill someone\u2019s wishes and role, but here he is the one who is creating the persona.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more \u2018Dutton Ranch\u2019 Star Juan Pablo Raba Has a Wild Theory About [SPOILER]\u2019s Murder: \u2018There\u2019s a Lot of Questions to Be Answered\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Director \u0160imon Hol\u00fd discusses \u2018Chica Checa,\u2019 his Karlovy Vary competition film and why the story became unexpectedly political.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3537,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2424,1438,2919],"class_list":["post-3538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-film","tag-chica-checa","tag-karlovy-vary-film-festival-2","tag-simon-holy"],"yoast_head":"\n\u0160imon Hol\u00fd Turns Drag, Family and Small-Town Life Into a Tender Political Statement in \u2018Chica Checa\u2019 - Relocation Observer<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=3538\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"\u0160imon Hol\u00fd Turns Drag, Family and Small-Town Life Into a Tender Political Statement in \u2018Chica Checa\u2019 - 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