Illustrative photo – Gabriela Soukalová with a small crystal globe for the overall victory in the SP pursuit races on an archival image.
Prague – Former world champion and biathlon World Cup winner Gabriela Soukalová is shooting an autobiographical film with director Petr Větrovský. At today's press conference, they announced that they have been working on the film for a year and a half and the shooting should end soon. The film titled Gabriela Soukalová: Pravda se stil pasplaté should appear in cinemas next year.
Advertisement'; }
Soukalová last competed in March 2017. Due to calf problems, she missed the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics. In the spring of the same year, she published an autobiographical book, Jiná, in which she talked about her long-term struggle with an eating disorder and conflicting relationships with her parents and other team members. Not only in the biathlon world at the time, this book caused a great stir.
The upcoming film continues. “The story is not a filmed book. There are also things from the past that I have never told anyone. There is also another stage depicted, the next six years of my life. I hope that every viewer will find some parallel there,” said Soukalová.
At the time of the book's publication, she was married to former badminton player Petr Koukal, whom she divorced in 2020. Then she returned to her maiden name Soukalová and started a relationship with Miloš Kadeřábek, with whom she has a one and a half year old daughter Izabela. She hosted a program about celebrities on TV.
With another open confession, this time on the movie screen, she wants to inspire others. “I hope that, overall, my story will motivate a lot of people during life in moments when we can't laugh,” she said.
Director Větrovský has already made films about the Slovak MMA fighter Attil Végh and the best gunner in the history of Czech football representation to Jan Koller. “My team and I said that one day we would like to film about a woman,” he confided. When he got the offer to portray Soukalová's story, he looked at two of her winning races on the Internet. “When I saw that drive and that lioness painted and driving to the finish line with that hair, I thought I had to film it,” he said. After a year and a half of filming, they became friends with Soukalová. “In my opinion, he is mainly a good person. Nowadays, it is necessary to show the stories of these people with good character. This is the balance that Gábina can offer with her character and story,” he added.
