On the anniversary of Venezuela’s disputed 2024 elections, Prague-based filmmakers Valerio Mendoza Guillén and Jorge Sánchez Calderón released the first trailer for their upcoming documentary Volver a Volver (Má země v nedohlednu). The timing highlights the film’s urgent subject matter: the displacement of millions of Venezuelans amid political upheaval and economic collapse.
Set to premiere in Czech cinemas on Nov. 6, 2025, the documentary follows the Toro-Sýkora family, who were forced to leave their homeland and seek a new life in the Czech Republic. The family’s story reflects both the personal toll of Venezuela’s crisis and the broader history of migration between the two countries.
Mendoza Guillén and Sánchez Calderón, expatriate filmmakers living in Prague, use the documentary to explore how a family navigates the challenges of starting over—language barriers, cultural differences, and the emotional weight of leaving a lifetime behind.
From Venezuela to Czechia: a story of migration in reverse
Venezuela was once a magnet for immigrants, including those fleeing communist Czechoslovakia in the 1950s. Among them was Jan Sýkora, who settled in a then-thriving Venezuela with his family. Decades later, his descendants are retracing his steps in the opposite direction.
The film centers on his granddaughter Jerina, her husband Edgar, and their children as they arrive in Czechia under a government repatriation program. The documentary portrays both the practical and emotional struggles they encounter: depleted savings, bureaucratic hurdles, and the challenge of finding work in a new environment.
“Leaving behind more than 40 years in Venezuela and arriving in a new country, a new culture, a new language—it all means a lot of fear,” Jerina says in the film. Her husband Edgar adds: “You must accept that you are nobody.”
The directors highlight how the family’s experiences mirror those of millions of Venezuelans who fled a country once considered one of Latin America’s most prosperous. Over the past 12 years, roughly a third of the population—around nine million people—has left Venezuela, driven by political repression, food shortages, and record hyperinflation.
A Czech-Venezuelan perspective on crisis and resilience
For Mendoza Guillén and Sánchez Calderón, who have roots in Venezuela and Spain but live in Prague, the project is both personal and political. “As filmmakers of Venezuelan and Spanish origin, we felt a strong need to tell this story,” they said. Learning about Czechia’s repatriation program for families of Czech descent gave them what they describe as “a unique perspective” on a crisis seen through multiple generations.
The film also reflects on Venezuela’s wider collapse: from its reputation as a wealthy nation in the mid-20th century to what the directors call “one of the saddest chapters in modern Latin American history.” Reports of kidnappings, human rights abuses, rolling blackouts, and shortages of basic goods form the backdrop against which families like the Toro-Sýkoras must decide whether to stay or leave.
Produced by Kateřina Černá through Prague-based Negativ, Volver a Volver is a Czech-German co-production with Czech Television and MDR, supported by the Czech Audiovisual Fund. Distribution in Czechia will be handled by Pilot Film.
For the filmmakers, the family’s story captures the broader human cost of forced migration and the resilience required to begin again. “Each member of the family—parents and teenagers alike—faces their own dreams and fears,” they note. The result is a portrait not just of survival, but of the search for belonging in unfamiliar surroundings.
Lead photo: Still from Volver a Volver (2025) © Negativ
