President Wanted

Inside the race for Czech democracy's first popular vote.

The Czech Republic in 2012 stood at a democratic turning point. After decades in which parliament alone chose the head of state, the country prepared to hold its first-ever direct presidential election. Director Tomáš Kudrna seized the opportunity to embed himself in the political arena, gaining access to the interstices of thirteen different campaigns to document an event that would mark a new chapter in the nation's post-Soviet history.

President Wanted moves through the campaign season with an observational eye, revealing the anonymous individuals who keep electoral machines running: the woman hidden inside a bus that winds through town broadcasting a political programme, the anxious protocol agent dabbing a drop from a candidate's face moments before a public appearance. These small, human details form a panorama of political life that news coverage rarely reaches, making visible the labour, improvisation, and occasional absurdity that underpin the pursuit of the highest office.

The film crew gained access to most of the presidential candidates throughout the signature-gathering process and the nine-candidate first round, capturing the dramatic moments that defined each campaign. After the first round, former Prime Minister Miloš Zeman and Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg emerged as the two finalists, and the contest sharpened considerably. Schwarzenberg's controversial remarks comparing the post-war expulsion of Sudeten Germans to modern standards of international law provoked a fierce response from Zeman and drew in outgoing President Václav Klaus, turning the run-off into one of the most contentious electoral battles in the country's recent history. Zeman ultimately prevailed and was inaugurated as president.

Kudrna's film is less a partisan account than a clinical study of political theatre: a space governed more by instinct, image management, and opportunism than by diplomacy or principle. The result is a documentary portrait of democracy in action, warts and all, arriving at a moment when the Czech Republic was still learning what it meant to choose its own leader.