New doc sends Czech Putin sympathizers to Ukraine, premieres on ’68 invasion anniversary

Fifty-six years to the day after Soviet tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia, a new Czech film is forcing audiences to confront the uncomfortable echoes of history. Change My Mind, a raw and unflinching documentary by director Robin Kvapil, opens in Czech cinemas on Aug. 21, the anniversary of the 1968 invasion that crushed Prague Spring.

The documentary follows three Czech citizens, Nikola, Petra, and Ivo, all sympathetic to Russian propaganda about Ukraine. Recruited through a public casting call, they accepted an invitation to travel with Kvapil and his crew straight into the war zone.

What began as a road trip into disputed “truths” quickly became a devastating confrontation with rockets, mass graves, and children learning lessons underground in Kyiv’s metro stations.

“The idea for Change My Mind came from a desire to take people who deny the war and confront them with its reality,” Kvapil says. “From the very first scouts, we saw how difficult and emotional this would be. At one point, we arrived at Kyiv’s oncology hospital just hours after it was hit by Russian missiles.”

Shot primarily around Kharkiv, the crew captured life lived under constant threat. “In Kharkiv, you have thirty seconds from the air raid warning to impact, which usually isn’t enough time to hide,” Kvapil says.

“Anyone can try this experience through the Air Raid Alert Map of Ukraine app. Let it run for a day, and you’ll understand a fraction of what people live with there.”

For Ukrainians watching the film, the emotions run deep. One viewer at an early screening told us:

“As a Ukrainian, it was emotionally difficult for me to watch this film, because for me it is not just a movie, it is our reality, the one we have been living in as a nation since 2014 and then 2022. My overall impression of the film is that it feels like an experiment that ended far from a happy ending, even though that may have been the outcome the director hoped for.”

Another emphasized its urgency beyond cinema:

“Still, this film is very important, if only to make society aware of how global and devastating the information war unleashed by Russia truly is. The film has an open ending but calls for a decisive continuation…Russia can only be defeated by decisive action.”

The timing of the release, Aug. 21, is deliberate. Just as Soviet tanks crushed hopes for democracy in 1968, Russia’s war in Ukraine now seeks to silence another nation. For Kvapil, the film is both a portrait of persuasion and a warning:

“There’s no reason to think the Russian regime wouldn’t be capable of doing the same here in Czechia.”

Produced by Punk Film and co-produced by Czech Television, Change My Mind is distributed by Bontonfilm. The filmmakers returned from Ukraine with 140 hours of footage and distilled it into a 90-minute confrontation with truth, propaganda, and denial, one that audiences in Prague and across Czechia will now be asked to face head-on.