If Pigeons Turned to Gold: The Czech Oscar Submission About Addiction, Homelessness and Family Shame

If Pigeons Turned to Gold sounds almost whimsical. The documentary is not.

Director Pepa Lubojacki spent roughly five years filming her own family as her older brother and two cousins lived unhoused and struggled with addiction. The result became one of the most talked-about Czech documentaries of 2026: it won the Berlinale Documentary Award and the Caligari Film Award, screened at Karlovy Vary, and was selected by the Czech Film and Television Academy as Czechia’s submission for the 99th Academy Awards.

The film is getting fresh international attention this week after The Guardian profiled Lubojacki and the uncomfortable question at the center of the movie: what happens when you love someone with addiction, but love no longer feels like enough?

What is If Pigeons Turned to Gold actually about?

The film began from a different idea. Lubojacki had been thinking about pigeons — creatures that people often treat as dirty, unwanted or disposable. Over time, the project turned toward her own family and the way people experiencing addiction and homelessness can be treated with a similar mixture of disgust, fear and distance.

Lubojacki films largely on an iPhone. Her brother David and two cousins live on the streets and move through addiction, unstable housing and fractured family relationships. Instead of presenting them as case studies, the film keeps returning to the family’s memories, arguments, loyalties and failures.

There is even a talking pigeon. The documentary mixes diary footage, childhood photos, animation, graphic interventions and AI-animated family images. That formal playfulness sits beside material that is often painful to watch.

The central tension is not simply “why did these men become addicted?” It is also what addiction did to everyone around them — and what the family did in response.

Why is the director’s own shame such a big part of the story?

One reason the film stands out is that Lubojacki does not place herself outside the problem.

She has spoken about feeling ashamed of her brother’s homelessness and addiction, and about gradually recognizing how much of that shame had been shaped by the way society talks about people who use drugs or live on the street.

The film does not turn that realization into a clean confession where everyone forgives everyone else. It leaves in anger, embarrassment, control, resentment and exhaustion.

That matters because family stories about addiction are often edited into two simple roles: the person who is “sick” and the relatives who are “supportive.” Real families are usually much messier than that.

A sibling can love someone deeply and still avoid their calls. A parent can want to help and still become controlling. A family member can understand addiction intellectually and still feel humiliated when it becomes visible to other people.

Is the film saying addiction is caused by family trauma?

Not exactly — and this is one of the areas viewers are debating.

Some Letterboxd reviewers have praised the documentary for showing addiction, homelessness and intergenerational trauma without turning them into moral failure. Others have pushed back against the film’s repeated focus on family history and trauma, arguing that the explanation can sometimes feel too neat. A separate strand of reaction has focused on the film’s use of AI to animate old family photographs.

Those are reactions to the film, not settled facts about addiction.

On the medical side, the basic point is clearer: addiction is not simply a lack of willpower. The U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse describes addiction as a medical disorder shaped by biological and environmental risk factors, while SAMHSA emphasizes that substance use problems can affect the whole family and that family support can play an important role in treatment and recovery.

That still does not mean every addiction can be traced back to one childhood event or one family relationship. The science is more complicated, and the film itself is most interesting when it allows that complexity to remain unresolved.

Why are people talking about the film now?

The timing is unusually strong.

The film won two major prizes at the Berlinale earlier this year. It later appeared at Karlovy Vary. In August, the Czech Film and Television Academy selected it as the country’s official submission for the Academy Awards’ International Feature Film category. And this week, The Guardian brought the story to a much wider English-speaking audience.

It is also currently in Czech cinemas, which gives the film a second life beyond the festival circuit.

That combination — awards, Oscar submission, theatrical release and a fresh English-language profile — is why a small personal documentary about one family is suddenly becoming part of a much larger conversation about addiction and shame.

The hardest question in the film: do you save someone, or let go?

The official synopsis asks a brutal question: what is the right expression of love — to save, or to let go?

Families dealing with addiction often get trapped inside exactly that binary.

If they keep rescuing, they worry they are enabling. If they step back, they worry they are abandoning someone. If they set boundaries, they may feel cruel. If they do not set boundaries, the whole family can begin orbiting one person’s crisis.

There is no one rule that solves every situation. SAMHSA’s 2026 family guide makes a similar point in more practical language: family experiences vary, and support should include the wellbeing and resilience of everyone involved — not only the person in treatment.

For a deeper practical look at that tension, CWM’s guide How Families Can Support Recovery Without Controlling It focuses on the difference between care, control and boundaries.

OliviaC: shame can make love smaller

OliviaC reflection: The part of this film I find hardest is not the addiction. It is the shame.

Shame makes people edit their families.

We tell the acceptable version at work. We avoid explaining why someone did not come to Christmas. We stop posting photos. We get angry when the person’s crisis becomes visible because visibility means other people can judge us too.

That does not mean families are shallow or cruel. Sometimes shame is just exhaustion wearing nicer clothes.

What If Pigeons Turned to Gold seems willing to admit is that loving someone does not automatically make us generous, patient or wise. Sometimes love and resentment live in the same room.

I think that is more useful than a clean lesson about compassion.

You can reject the idea that addiction is a moral failure and still acknowledge the damage it can cause. You can care about someone and still need distance. You can understand more without pretending the hurt did not happen.

Go Deeper

Sources

• The Guardian, September 22, 2026 — Lubojacki interview, family story, shame, addiction and homelessness.
• Czech Film and Television Academy — official Czech Oscar submission.
• Karlovy Vary International Film Festival — synopsis, credits and festival context.
• NOISE Film & TV — official press materials and film synopsis.
• Letterboxd — public viewer reactions; used only as discussion evidence.
• National Institute on Drug Abuse — addiction science and the limits of the “willpower” explanation.
• SAMHSA, 2026 — family experiences in mental health and substance use care.

Featured image: official film poster supplied through the film’s sales/press materials (Split Screen / film publicity artwork).