Returning to the Vampire Castle
2026

short film together with Jasmína Lustigová

Returning to the Vampire Castle explores the adoption of Western architectural paradigms in Central Europe through the lens of a vampire story, set on the grounds of a polarizing Czech symbol - the Prague Castle. A Western starchitect is invited to materialize new values by planning a number of landmarks and interventions at the Castle. Just as Jonathan Harker once set out on a mission to Transylvania, she is now tasked with anchoring a Central European identity, which in her eyes hovers in a liminal space between reality and imagination, civilization and mystery. After her arrival, she is met with vampires who dwell and rule within the castle’s walls. The vampire genre of the 19th century was based on orientalist fabulation about the unknown East—a distant region inhabited by dark and dreadful things, awaiting salvation by a pure soul. Prague Castle, ever unfinished since the ninth century, now faces pressure for change.