A DYING FOX TURNS ITS HEAD TO HOME
In searching for a home with five strangers,
I slowly learned to open my own.
A feature documentary by Alžběta Kovandová-Bartoníčková
SYNOPSIS
After moving to London, Czech filmmaker Alžběta Kovandová-Bartoníčková struggles to feel at home. Living between the United Kingdom and the Czech Republic, and still affected by a burglary that disrupted her sense of safety, she begins searching for what allows people to belong in a city like London.
During the pandemic, she turns to five Londoners she has never met before. Their online conversations gradually become walks through neighbourhoods, visits to homes and a six-year collaborative exploration of the places, relationships and memories that make up a sense of home.
As the world around them changes, the boundaries between filmmaker and participant begin to shift. Alžběta eventually invites each of them into her own home – just as she faces the possibility of leaving London behind.
ABOUT THE PROJECT
Developed over six years, The Dying Fox Turns Its Head to Home combines long-term documentary observation, participatory filmmaking and personal storytelling.
The project began online during the pandemic through video calls and virtual walks on Google Maps, before moving into London’s neighbourhoods and homes. The five participants helped shape the direction of the film, gradually becoming collaborators in a shared search for home.
The film emerged from Alžběta’s practice-as-research PhD at the University of Kent.
DIRECTOR'S NOTE
For years, I kept returning to the idea of home in my films. Then a burglary in Liverpool shattered my own sense of safety, and the question became deeply personal. Soon afterwards, I moved to London, but despite wanting to make it my home, I found it difficult.
Instead of searching for answers on my own, I turned to five Londoners I had never met before. I deliberately chose people with very different backgrounds and life experiences, curious to see how each of them understood home in a city as diverse and constantly changing as London.
The film became both a personal journey and the central part of my practice-based PhD, exploring home through documentary filmmaking. Made over six years, the film combines participatory and observational documentary with essayistic and autobiographical elements. It moves between online and offline encounters, reflecting both the changing relationships between us and the changing world around us. As my relationships with the participants deepened, the film gradually shifted from exploring their understanding of home to questioning my own. Somewhere along the way, I stopped being only the filmmaker and became one of the
film's characters myself.
Feature documentary · 86 min · 2026 ·
Director: Alžběta Kovandová-Bartoníčková
Producer: Stephan Herzog
Production: Herzog Media
Cinematography: Fraser Stephan
Screener available upon request.
