Future Gate 2026

From 28 September, Prague hosts the 13th edition of the Future Gate sci-fi film and culture festival. The festival's guest of honour is Oscar-winning editor Joe Walker, who worked on Dune, Arrival, Blade Runner 2049, and 12 Years a Slave. Future Gate will premiere Czech screenings of films from Berlin, Toronto, Tribeca, and Fantasia festivals.

This year's main competition features seven films. Junk World continues Junk Head, which won both the festival's top prize and audience award at Future Gate; director Takahide Hori again pushes stop-motion animation to extremes. Freaks II follows the Canadian indie hit about a world where people with supernatural abilities are hunted mercilessly; Future Gate will be among the first venues to show the film after Fantasia. Colony, from the director of the cult classic Train to Busan, revisits the zombie genre in a confined space. Crocodile proves that quality sci-fi needs only craftsmanship and heart. A documentary portrait, honoured at Tribeca, follows the collective The Critics and their drive to make films despite unimaginable obstacles. Island of Tomorrow is a darkly comic Australian short about a time loop with unwelcoming yet believable characters. Light Pillar, a melancholic animated film shown in the Perspectives section at Berlin, explores forms of human closeness in the near future. This Film Is About You is a deeply personal story of one chance encounter.

This year's theme is "Geopolitics and Resources of the Future". Future conflicts, it suggests, will not be fought only over land and raw materials, but also over energy networks, asteroid mining, and data control - energy becomes a strategic tool of power, and data a new source of real strength.