Czech Television releases "Filter," a series about growing up and the search for sexual identity

Czech Television has released a new series called "Filter" — a drama about teenagers coming of age and searching for their sexual identity. The project already made waves at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival, and now all six episodes are available on the iVysílání platform.

The idea for the series came from Czech Television itself, which approached the creators with a request to make something specifically for young audiences. The director and screenwriter behind the project is David Semler, a 36-year-old graduate of the Theatre Academy (DAMU) and the Faculty of Arts at Charles University, where he studied English and American Studies as well as Czech language and literature. "Filter" is his feature-length debut after several student short films.

What the series is about

According to Semler, the show's main focus isn't so much coming out as it is the difficulties of adolescence and the tricky transition from elementary to secondary school. At the centre of the story is Matty, a withdrawn teenager (played by Antonio Šoposki), who falls for his confident classmate Radek (Adam Bouš). Other key roles are played by Marta Issová and Simona Peková.

The cast delivers fairly natural performances — the creators avoided overloading the dialogue with the teen slang and Anglicisms that typically fill young people's speech. That said, the series doesn't shy away from heavy topics: it touches on bullying, self-harm, sugar dating (relationships with much older partners), non-binary characters and the influence of social media. For such a short runtime, though, there's so much packed in that it can occasionally feel a bit forced.

Adults "filter" reality too

The title plays on more than just the photo filters teenagers use in apps — it also nods to how the adult characters "filter" the world around them, choosing not to notice, or not wanting to notice, what's happening with their children and grandchildren, preferring to see them as they wish them to be. Simona Peková clearly relishes playing one such grandmother, while Marta Issová's character, the protagonist's mother, builds her own "filter" against reality through a new relationship.

The mini-series spares neither its young protagonists nor its viewers, serving as a reminder of just how difficult and cruel growing up can be. At the same time, LGBTQ+ characters are portrayed here so matter-of-factly that viewers stop seeing them as a "minority" at all — and the creators consider this one of the project's greatest strengths.

Each episode runs about twenty minutes — likely out of concern that a longer format couldn't compete with young viewers' endless phone-scrolling habits. Even so, all six episodes are already available in full and can be watched back-to-back like a feature film.

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Around Prague, based on reporting by novinky.cz