A raw, self-made and deeply personal work, If Pigeons Turned to Gold cuts into addiction and intergenerational trauma, capturing several years in the lives of four family members. Pepa, the director, records on an iPhone and tries to understand why their beloved older brother and cousins live unhoused and experience substance
addiction.
Formally inventive and playful, diaristic footage enters into dialogue with stylised memories, AI-animated photographs and graphic interventions, shaping a plural voice that negotiates with the past. Unsentimentally, the film traces the causes and fallout of addiction, asking where love ends, control begins, and what respect truly demands: to save, or to let go.
Josefina ‘Pepa’ Lubojacki (they/she) is a Prague-based scriptwriter and documentary film director. Their first short documentary film About-hair was nominated for the Magnesia Award in 2019. It was screened at the Ji.hlava IDFF, Prague shorts (Czech Republic), River Film Festival (Italy), Cineffable (France), MakeDox (Macedonia), Filmfest Weiterstadt (Germany) and Art200 (Romania).
Their work focuses on topics such as gender binarity and stereotypes, familytrauma, addiction, and co-dependency. They are also working on their first feature film script.
