The Future Gate film festival, Central Europe’s largest celebration of science fiction cinema, will return to Prague and cinemas across Czechia next week with a wide-ranging lineup of new features, cult classics, and documentaries. The 12th edition of the festival will open at Kino Lucerna in Prague on Sept. 29 before traveling to Brno and a series of regional cities across the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
This year’s theme, the human body, will be explored through stories of cybernetic enhancement, genetic engineering, and artificial intelligence. Future Gate director Filip Schauer said the 2025 program asks whether technological upgrades might cost humanity something essential.
“If we can improve our physical abilities or even replace parts of the body with technology, do we lose something fundamental to our humanity?” he said. Films, installations, and a diverse side program will examine those questions from multiple angles.
New releases and competition highlights
The main competition will showcase recent international sci-fi productions in their broadest variety. The festival opens with the Ukrainian chamber drama U Are the Universe, director Pavlo Ostrikov’s meditation on the last living human adrift in space.
French filmmaker Julia Ducournau, known for her visceral body horror in Raw and Titane, presents her coming-of-age feature Alpha, a Cannes audience favorite screening in Czechia as a pre-premiere. Chinese director Bi Gan brings the visually ambitious odyssey Resurrection, fresh from screening at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.
Other entries include the black-and-white art film Obex, a metaphorical study of loneliness by Albert Birney; Warner Bros.’ anime All You Need Is Kill, adapted from the Japanese novel that inspired the Tom Cruise film Edge of Tomorrow; and the Estonian-Finnish comedy The Black Hole, in which aliens land in a drab housing estate with chaotic results.
An international jury featuring Czech director Robert Hloz (Restore Point), fashion designer Monika Vaverová, and Oscar-nominated British filmmaker Robert Stone (Radio Bikini) will select the festival’s top prize, while audiences will vote for a separate viewers’ award.
The documentary program also embraces a human body theme. Highlights include How to Train AI, a look inside Google DeepMind; Cyborg: A Documentary, profiling artist-musician Neil Harbisson, the first officially recognized cyborg; Dangerous Games: Roblox and the Metaverse; Engineering Earth by audiovisual creator John D. Boswell; Sex Robot Madness, exploring the world of intelligent sex robots; and Starman, Robert Stone’s portrait of NASA engineer and futurist Gentry Lee.
Genre legends and special guests
Future Gate’s classics section revisits milestones that reshaped science fiction’s depiction of the body. Screenings include David Cronenberg’s 1986 body horror The Fly, Paul Verhoeven’s 1987 cybernetic thriller RoboCop, a restored version of Japanese director Mamoru Oshii’s Angel’s Egg, the first three installments of the Alien saga, and Steven Spielberg’s family favorite E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.
One of the festival’s most anticipated guests is Lloyd Kaufman, co-founder of Troma Entertainment, known for its gleefully anarchic cult films. Kaufman will attend screenings in Prague and Brno, where Future Gate will present his 1984 splatter comedy The Toxic Avenger alongside Occupy Cannes!, his daughter Lily-Hayes Kaufman’s new documentary about the studio’s enduring legacy.
Beyond screenings, the festival will feature a student film competition for Czech and Slovak filmmakers, a program for schools focused on online safety, and art installations tied to this year’s theme. A limited-edition T-shirt created with Czech artist Jan Gemrot will raise funds for charity.
After its Prague launch, Future Gate will travel to Brno and host satellite events in Plzeň, Hradec Králové, Šumperk, Olomouc, Hodonín, and Košice. Full program details and ticket information are available at the official Future Gate website.
