↘ ↘ ↘
Political documentary / Creative nonfiction
Directed by Andrea Culková
Dear People, Dear Citizens
We are not f*ked
because we are stupid.
We are f*ked because
we are trapped in a system
designed to ignore us.
Logline:
Scrap politicians.
Bring back sortition!
Tagline:
Far-right extremism
is rising, the climate is collapsing,
and the electorate is paralyzed
by apathy and rage.
Europe is burning.
→ → →
Synopsis / Long:
ask the question:
→→→
Ursula von der Leyen
Emmanuel
Macron
Guy Verhofstadt
Daniel Freund
ask the question: → → →
EU leaders, including
↘ ↘ ↘
President
of the European
Commission
Member of
the European
Parliament
Member of
the European
Parliament
President
of France
What will save Europe?
800
citizens selected
at random
Dear People, Dear Citizens
follows ↘ ↘ ↘
including nurses, students, factory workers, and
retirees, drafted by lot to fix the European Union.
these strangers bridge
their divides
draft bold
solutions for social inequality,
climate collapse, biodiversity loss,
and democratic decision-making.
and dive deep into
the issues to → → →
Placed in a carefully
designed space, → → →
citizens insist that their
proposals be implemented, they
clash with pushback from their
own nation-states
The "Power of the Design" crashes
into the "Design of Power".
and the EU's fear of its own
courage and of real change. → → →
But when
these → → →
director Andrea
Culková transforms her amazement
at the citizens' unexpected
competence and her mounting
frustration with the political
system into live performances.
While following this dramatic fight
for the future of the continent, → → →
a sex strike for
peace to giving decision-making
power to nature and future
generations,
hexing the political oligarchy, and
returning power to the people.
it culminates in casting a spell
with collected parliamentary hair, → → →
Ranging from bathroom graffiti
of collective intelligence and → → →
are we, the people, ready for
a Copernican political revolution
that scraps political parties and
brings back sortition?
In a system where voters are often forced to choose between "the plague
and cholera," can these 800 citizens break the cycle? And even more, → → →
Dear People, Dear Citizens
follows 800 ordinary people drafted by lot to fix Europe.
director Andrea Culková
channels societal frustration into live performances:
from a sex strike to hexing the political oligarchy
the shocking competence of the people
versus the cowardice of power, asking: when the
political system is deeply broken, are we bold and
creative enough to redesign it?
When a continent burns with extremism and
climate collapse, the EU takes a radical gamble. → → →
Their fearless and fair proposals clash with a terrified political
establishment. As nation-states betray their citizens, → → →
with parliamentary hair. This
documentary captures → → →
Synopsis / Short:
blueprint for
redesigning the political machine so it can finally
produce decisions that are truly democratic, beneficial
to both people and nature, and sustainable for the long
term.
wake-up call
for citizens who believe their voice no longer matters.
In an era when two-thirds of European countries face far-right surges and parliamentary
systems are paralyzed by polarization, this film offers more than critique – it offers a → → →
It transforms the dry academic concept of "deliberative democracy" into an emotional,
suspenseful narrative. It is a tool for activists, a mirror for politicians, and a → → →
Why This Film Matters Now:
Runtime: 118 minutes
Languages: Multilingual (with EN/CZ subtitles)
Release Year: 2026
Format: 4K | DCP/mov | Dolby 5.1
Locations: Czech Republic, France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Ireland, Poland, Switzerland
Trailer & Visuals:
International Title
Dear People,
Dear Citizens
Original Title
Drazí spoluobčané
Ursula von der Leyen / President of the European Commission
Guy Verhofstadt, Daniel Freund / Members of the European Parliament
David Sassoli, Roberta Metsola / Presidents of the European Parliament
800 citizens selected at random
Emmanuel Macron / President of France
Hélène Landemore, Claudia Chwalisz, Yves Sintomer, Ieva Česnulaitytė, Chloé Santoro,
David Van Reybrouck / Leading political thinkers on sortition and democracy
Featuring
The Citizens vs. The Establishment
The film provides unprecedented access
to the clash between ordinary people and
the European continent's most powerful
figures, including:
Director, Writer & Editor: Andrea Culková
Producers: Miroslav Novák & Andrea Culková / Duracfilm
Co-Production: Czech TV
Editing Supervision: Audrey Maurion, Yael Bitton, Oliver Held
Cinematography (DOP): Andrea Culková, Diviš Novák, Amálie Nováková, Velen Novák, Miroslav Novák
Sound Postproduction: Petr Čechák / Starmount
Support: Czech Audiovisual Fund and the dok.incubator workshop 2025
Music: Jakub Kudláč
The Creative Team
Andrea Culková is a filmmaker and visual artist
who operates like a "social surgeon," cutting into
institutional dysfunction with a scalpel dipped in
humor, ritual, and political imagination. Her work lives
at the intersection of documentary and performance,
where policy meets poetry, and parliaments meet
witchcraft. Her commissioned work includes pieces
for the Museum of Literature in Prague.
Her early film Internal Office Communication screened at Ji.hlava and DOK
Leipzig, and was banned by the Czech government. Her feature Sugar Blues had
its international premiere at CPH:DOX in the F:ACT Award competition, screened
at numerous international festivals, sold worldwide to major broadcasters, and
achieved global theatrical distribution, including a commercial cinema release in
Japan. Her meta-art project HART ON*, which premiered at DOK Leipzig, explores
the deep connection between modern art, sexuality, and creative passion. Her
documentary Don't Take My Life ignited a national debate on debt enforcement.
Her feature Raising Boys for the Future is an intimate account of four young
people who, through the creation of a theatrical performance, search for their own
definition of masculinity. Her essayistic feature Grief explored climate collapse and
psychological anxiety. Her fiction script, The Fragile Beauty of Masculinity, was
selected for the EWA Network Scriptwriters' Residency in Berlin.
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About the Director:
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Beyond the festival circuit, Culková is a researcher
and activist. Since 2019, she has focused her PhD on the
"Deliberative Wave" and co-founded the Platform for Citizens'
Assemblies in the Czech Republic.
In Dear People, Dear Citizens, she becomes an "Invoker,"
a modern bard turning political frustration into ritual. Over
five years, she traveled across Europe, capturing the rise of
citizens' assemblies, weaving their struggle into a film that
is equal parts observant documentary, magical rebellion, and
urgent provocation.
We produce as good
a decision as
the design of
the decision-making
process allows.
Director’s Statement
Based on the essay
"Active Hope: Reimagining
Political Agency"
by Andrea Culková
Fukuyama’s "End of History" has not only failed; it has become
comical. Yet, we rarely pause to ask why. We mourn the loss
of a democratic "heaven" that never truly existed. The hard
truth is that our representative parliamentary system was
never designed for true people power; it was built by elites (like
Jefferson’s "natural aristocracy") to maintain the status quo.
It is this very design, competitive, short-sighted, and prone to
oligarchy, that has paved the way for the current rise of
far-right extremism and apathy.
I have spent five years traveling across Europe with my
camera, observing and studying, in my PhD research,
a counter-movement:
the Deliberative Wave
(up to today more
than 700 citizens' assemblies at local, national, European, and
even global levels, including their systemic institutionalization
within decision-making structures).
In making
Dear People, Dear Citizens, I operated not just
as a filmmaker, but as an
Invoker
, a witness, and performer
seeking to understand if we can redesign the machine.
I watched for over 5 years as 2000 citizens, selected by lottery,
entered a space where the hierarchy was dissolved.
What I found is that
Active Hope
is not a wish; it is a discipline.
It is a practice.
When ordinary people are given what the current system
denies them:
time, complex knowledge, and a facilitated safe
space
, they do not succumb to polarization. They develop
cognitive empathy (understanding the context) and
emotional
empathy
(feeling the value of other lives). They step out of
their echo chambers and draft solutions that professional
politicians are too terrified to touch.
This film is my argument for a "Copernican Revolution" in
politics, as described by Hélène Landemore: a world where
citizens do not orbit institutions, but institutions orbit citizens.
We do not need to wait for the next war or the next collapse
to change how we decide our future. The design exists. The
citizens are ready.
