Caligari film award 2026 for IF PIGEONS TURNED TO GOLD

In this documentary journey over a five-year period, Pepa Lubojacki documents the lives of four family members, first and foremost brother David who is an alcoholic and homeless. Using a highly personal, diary-like collage Lubojacki attempts to lay bare the roots of intergenerational misfortune repeatedly manifested in severe addiction. Text sculptures, long-term observations, synth-infused beats and AI-animated childhood photos merge here into a striking and playful, unsparing yet loving revelation.

Pepa Lubojacki (they/she) is a Prague-based screenwriter and documentary film director whose work focuses on topics such as gender binarity and stereotypes, addiction, and intergenerational trauma.

The jury statement for the Caligari film prize 2026 to IF PIGEONS TURNED TO GOLD

We saw the film we selected as the winner of the 2026 Caligari Prize quite early on in our viewing marathon, and it has stayed with us ever since. This is due to its theme, but also to its cinematic methods.

“Memory is an unreliable storyteller,” it says at one point. Memory is still unreliable, even though the archive of our personal records—photos, videos, audio recordings, texts, recorded by us or others—is growing infinitely, increasingly in the form of materials that no longer have a pictorial character.

Memory and archive remain two different things. All the more so when you can make photos of people say things they might never have said themselves. The use of AI in this film is extensive, but always alienated and always recognizable as such. The audiovisual breaks, and perhaps also the ethical wrongness of putting words in people's mouths, are never covered up by gloss. The reflective figure for this is a squeaking pigeon. A filter—perhaps also a mask—that turns all naturalism into its opposite.

The appropriation of the family archive by AI is undoubtedly questionable. At the same time, the film never claims to be ethically unassailable, and that is to its credit. The obviously alienated photos and voices contrast with actual documentary material, thus emphasizing this intrusive alienation of the intimate and almost sacred, unclouded images of childhood.

The video recordings show her brother in vulnerable situations, and the director asks herself to what extent someone suffering from addiction can actually give consent. She is torn between incapacitation and empowerment, between the impulse to protect her brother and the desire to allow him to act on his own behalf. The real material is juxtaposed with the unreal, and the two challenge each other. Even when AI-generated voices make seemingly factual statements, the “uncanny” aesthetic motivates doubts about their accuracy. Pepa admits to her own unreliability several times.

“If Pigeons Turned to Gold” is a film that questions itself and its narratives, full of moments of irritation. The theme is addiction, both her own and that of others, and its surmountability and structural conditionality. The focus is on substance addiction, but underlying this is the addiction to control over the narrative of the film and its voices, as well as over her brother's addictive behavior. This tension is explicitly addressed.

Through brutal directness, she attempts to overcome her own shame. The pop-like form, developed from YouTube formats, stands in stark contrast to the intimate confessions. The film's reflective process is equally accessible and difficult to digest.

The Caligari Prize for 2026 is awarded to “If Pigeons Turned to Gold.”

About the Caligari prize

The film's world premiere took place on February 13, 2026 at the Zoo Palast 2 in Berlin.

Since 1986, the Caligari Prize has honored a film from the Berlinale Forum program that is innovative in both style and subject matter. In doing so, it underscores the special importance of this section of the Berlin International Film Festival for cultural cinema work in Germany.

The prize is awarded by the Federal Association of Communal Film Work and the Communal Cinemas in cooperation with filmfriend, the libraries’ streaming platform, and the electronic delivery service provider Gofilex. The majority of the prize money is donated by the Communal Cinemas.

The award is endowed with 4,000 Euro. Half of the prize money goes to the award winner, while the other half is allocated to the distributor to support the film’s nationwide theatrical release after the festival. The Caligari jury 2026 consisted of Jonas Helmerichs (Kino im Sprengel Hannover), Marlene Hofmann (Filmhaus Nürnberg/Grandfilm) and Moritz Mutter (head of the digital offerings of the Berlin Public Library Network (VÖBB)).

⟫ Interview mit der Regisseurin Pepa Lubojacki: „Breaking the Cycle“