2026 Student Academy Awards Series Part 2: Volklore

Volklore, dir. Viktorie Štěpánová

Czech filmmaker Viktorie Štěpánová’s Volklore has won a Student Academy Award in the Alternative/Experimental category, making it the first Czech film ever to receive the honour. Štěpánová, a graduate of Prague’s FAMU film school, turns to the country’s rich traditions and folklore and gives them a distinctly Gen Z makeover. The result is a riotously playful, visually inventive film that asks a surprisingly serious question: what happens to tradition when it enters the world of social media?

Founded in 1946, FAMU is the fifth-oldest film school in the world, and Volklore feels deeply connected to the Czech avant-garde tradition that has emerged from its corridors. Yet Štěpánová’s film is unmistakably contemporary. Traditional stories and myths become the ancestors of today’s vlogs, regional dialects sit alongside the slang and expressions of TikTok, and folk customs are transformed into hashtags, fashion trends, branded content and viral spectacles.

At the center of this hyper-stylized influencer universe is Vivi, played by Monina Nevrlá, a charismatic YouTube personality who takes her followers through the traditional Moravian year, connecting folk customs to the rhythms of contemporary fashion and internet culture. A traditional Easter celebration becomes a “Get Ready with Me” video; preparations for St. Matthias Day are transformed into a fashion event; and centuries-old customs are repackaged as content for an audience of followers. The film’s central conceit is both funny and unsettling: perhaps folklore has always been a form of collective storytelling, and social media has simply given it a new platform.

Štěpánová presents Volklore as though we are watching a recording of a desktop screen, spending an afternoon scrolling through the strange and endlessly distracting recesses of the Czech internet. Hashtags, chat rooms, pop-up notifications, split screens, Zoom calls and deliberately ridiculous advertisements constantly interrupt the narrative (we all could use those “candles that guard your peace”), perfectly capturing the language of influencer culture, where everything is filtered through a distinctly feminine aesthetic of lace, ribbons, glitter, makeup and fashion.

The film’s restless visual energy mirrors the experience of doomscrolling. Volklore rarely stays in one register for long, jumping from direct-to-camera monologues to dance numbers, fashion shows, mock advertisements and surreal internet montages. It feels almost like a TikTok feed designed for an audience with an even shorter attention span. Vivi’s mood board becomes a collage of superficiality and boundless creativity, while the sheer volume of information and invented “content” gives the impression of casually browsing an impossibly elaborate corner of the internet.

But beneath all the glitter and chaos is a sharp examination of commodification. In Volklore, traditions become marketing tools, remixed into seasonal trends, fashion spectacles and viral content. Folklore is no longer simply something preserved from the past; it is something performed, packaged and consumed. A folk costume can become a fashion statement. A ritual can become an Instagram post. A local tradition can become a brand.

And Štěpánová pushes the idea even further: folklore is not simply about the past. Folklore is the Met Gala. Folklore is fashion week. Folklore is TikTok, local girlbands and the constantly evolving language of the internet. What communities once created through stories, rituals and regional customs, online communities now create through memes, trends and shared digital references. The followers become the village; the influencer becomes its storyteller. This collision between the old and the new places Volklore firmly within the Czech cinematic tradition: its anarchic spirit recalls Věra Chytilová’s Daisies (1966), while its surrealism evokes films such as Jaromil Jireš’ Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (1970). There are also echoes of the youthful energy and social observation of Miloš Forman’s Loves of a Blonde (1965). Yet Štěpánová updates these influences for a world ruled by Vogue, Instagram and the attention economy.

The comparison with Chytilová is particularly fitting. Like Daisies, Volklore embraces disruption, excess and visual experimentation, refusing to behave like a conventional narrative film. Its chaos is carefully constructed. Every transition, notification, graphic and fake advertisement contributes to a seductive online ecosystem in which authenticity itself becomes a performance. The film’s closing credits continue the joke, thanking “YouTube, Emma Chamberlain, Instagram, Pinterest, Patreon, Discord and the digital folklore of fashion groups.” It is an appropriately irreverent ending to a film that refuses to draw a simple line between authentic tradition and artificial modernity.

The genius of Volklore is that, for all its apparent chaos, it is genuinely an exploration of Czech folklore. Štěpánová has created something that could easily be mistaken for a playful internet parody, but beneath its glittering surface is an intricate portrait of how culture evolves. The traditional Moravian year remains recognizable, but it has been filtered through the visual language of influencers, fashion media and social platforms.

Štěpánová has acknowledged that she was unsure how much international audiences would understand, given how deeply the film is rooted in Czech traditions. Yet perhaps that cultural specificity is precisely what makes Volklore so compelling abroad. For outsiders, Europe can seem like a collection of small, distinct worlds, each with its own customs, languages and mythology. Prague is often imagined as a fairy-tale city and Volklore plays with that romantic image while simultaneously dismantling it. What emerges is a film about much more than Czech folklore. It is about the way every generation reinvents the stories it inherits. Traditions survive by changing, but in the age of platform capitalism, change can also mean commodification. Volklore leaves us with a deceptively simple question: when tradition becomes content, can it remain authentic, or does authenticity itself become just another brand?

Review by: Joshua Hunt