I’m Not Everything I Want To Be (Ještě nejsem, kým chci být), directed by Klára Tasovská, is a documentary that recounts the story of Libuše Jarcovjáková, a female Czech photographer who grew up in Soviet-occupied Prague, and became know for her photography of the underground LGBTQ scene.
The film is constructed using thousands of Jarcovjáková’s raw, candid personal diary entries and photographs; and is self narrated by the photographer herself.
It has been selected as the Czech Oscar entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 98th Academy Awards.
I’m Not Everything I Want To Be premiered in the Panorama section at the 2024 Berlin International Film Festival. It also won the Czech Lion Award for Best Documentary Feature as well as for Best Editing.
Grasshopper Film is expected to release the film in the US in late 2025.
The audience is let in to Jarcovjáková’s life as the story unfolds when she is denied entry to art school because she doesn’t fit the regime’s proletarian ideal. However, the artist’s ambitions lead her to towards the margins of society as she captures the lives of factory workers, the underground queer night scene, migrant communities, and her own self portraits.
When her work comes to light, the authorities force her into a marriage of convenience and eventually takes her to West Berlin, and later Tokyo, where for a brief moment she becomes a sought-after fashion photographer. But success doesn’t bring peace.
The film chases the age old question of what the suppressed artist truly wants out of this life and who she desires to become.
In an interview, director Tasovská described Jarcovjáková saying, “In an unfree regime, she sought islands of freedom: gay clubs, night shifts in factories, pubs, Vietnamese hostels. Places where people, from her point of view, lived without inhibitions. She wanted to belong to them and to feel alive.”
In their review International Cinephile Cinephile Society wrote, “I’m Not Everything I Want to Be is a film that asks many questions, but none more vital than trying to decipher who one is beneath the surface. It is rare to find a documentary that is entirely guided by the subject – but considering this film is composed solely of images taken by Jarcovjáková, as well as her voice being the only one we hear, it becomes an exercise in seeing just how authentic a film can be without needing to rely on heavy-handed narrative tactics.”
Watch the official trailer for I’m Not Everything I Want To Be above.
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