A Czech camera crew follows the lives of three OnlyFans content creators for a year in Virtual Girlfriends (Virtuální přítelkyně), which premiered at the recent Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival and opens this weekend in Prague cinemas (and with English subtitles at Kino Světozor). Even for those familiar with the OnlyFans platform, this is a revealing look behind the curtains of adult content creators—and the complex relationship with their fans.
An average scene from Czech family life, as captured by Virtual Girlfriends: as dad puts his kindergarten-age son to bed, mom dons a balaclava, lingerie, and pours herself a glass of champagne for a video chat with her top online fan, who has paid a premium price for the privilege.
Clearly, something does not seem to be healthy about the relationships on display here—between the real-life family members, and OnlyFans stars and their fans—but director Barbora Chalupová (Caught in the Net) takes a kind of perverse satisfaction in noting that these are the most well-adjusted people in her film. Rosalinda, the balaclava-clad creator, becomes confident enough over the course of the documentary to lose the disguise; it’s the support of her real-life partner that provides the backbone to her emotional fulfillment.
The other OnlyFans creators profiled in Virtual Girlfriends aren’t quite as lucky. The film opens with Inked Dory, a tattooed Slovak creator who conducts her first livestream after getting a boob job, and earns plenty of tips—money sent by her viewers through the OnlyFans platform. Fans can buy her a drink (she has a bottle of vodka at the ready) and she’ll perform certain actions when specific goals are hit. At $150 (CZK 3000), she takes off her top. It’s not a lot of money, but she earns from her computer over a couple hours what the average Czech makes in a couple days.
An outsider might assume this is the extent of the OnlyFans experience: adult content creators earn money through explicit photos and video. But via Dory, who leads an OnlyFans seminar, Chalupová reveals the true extent of what these women are actually selling on the platform, and what men are buying from them: relationships. Dory has a price list of services she offers, which includes personalized messages—texts and voice memos—sent to subscribers every day.
In one of the film’s most eye-opening revelations, Dory shares her top selling item: reviews of dick pics. She charges fans from $10 (CZK 200) to review candid shots of their members, which can take the form of minutes-long voice memos with commentary on length, girth, and vascular distribution. Chalupová’s previous film, Caught in the Net, shined a light on child predators sending unsolicited pics to minors; this, at least, is a more acceptable outlet.
The relationships aren’t one-sided; the protagonists of Virtual Girlfriends thrive on the attention they receive from their fans as much as the men get off on their artificial connection. The film is at its most stark when charting the plight of Tinix, a shy woman who has lost friends by turning to OnlyFans, and is embarrassed to admit that she only has 11 fans on the platform. She seems to be yearning for the kind of affection on OnlyFans that she isn’t receiving from her real-life boyfriend.
Tinix works at a customer service call center, and is told to reveal her OnlyFans activity to colleagues before they find out for themselves. There’s a quiet desperation to her story that recalls the 1990s films of Wiktor Grodecki, who charted the lives of male child prostitutes in Prague in Not Angels But Angels and Body Without Soul, and Virtual Girlfriends may have been too tough to take had it focused on her alone.
But Chalupová’s fly-on-the-wall approach allows her to capture a greater complexity in the lives of OnlyFans creators. Dory has ups and downs, and ends the film mired in depression after an hour-long livesteam nets her a cool $6.50 (CZK 130). She’s the only creator to indulge in hardcore pornography—her boyfriend films her giving him a blowjob—and while their complicated relationship is often at the center of the movie, it’s also the hardest to get a real handle on. She asks for his advice as she sends nightly texts to her virtual boyfriends, and the lines between these relationships start to blur.
The masked Rosalinda, meanwhile, becomes Virtual Girlfriends‘ unlikely heroine. Not only is her real-life partner emotionally supportive; so is her virtual one. Chalupová gets unprecedented access to the larger OnlyFans picture as she enters the home of David, the man who has been chatting with this balaclava-masked lingerie model for the past year, buying her weekend retreats by the lake. As Rosalinda finally does the face reveal, the poor man is in tears; this may the healthiest relationship with a woman he has ever had. And against our better judgment, we must admit that these people are genuinely happy.
While Virtual Girlfriends lacks the urgent social commentary of Caught in the Net, which confronted the online child predators, it remains a deeply insightful portrait of a digital economy driven by intimacy, attention, and the complex relationships between creators and their audiences. It shows how affection and validation circulate both online and off, giving a layered and empathetic look at a platform often reduced to its most salacious elements.
