We introduce Veronika Zacharová, the Animated Works category winner

The winner of Czech Leonarda 2025: Animated Works is VERONIKA ZACHAROVA and her project ZATOULANÁ (The Strayed One).

Veronika won with a project for a short animated film (8 min), without dialogue, intended for both children and adult audiences. Zatoulaná (The Strayed One) is a simple, highly visual story created for the medium of animated film. Veronika says that it came about in a flash, somewhere deep in her subconscious, and that she is only now trying to figure out its message. She sees a simplified concept of the feminine and masculine principles (which she does not necessarily perceive as a matter of gender) and the archetypal motifs associated with them, such as garden and rain. However, the main motif remains the basic desire for closeness and coexistence, whether in a friendly or romantic relationship, and in the second plan, the mutual benefit resulting from this reciprocity—growth, self-knowledge, security. First and foremost, however, it is still an idealized fairy tale, longing to convey a moment of kindness to all viewers, as she perceives an acute lack of it.
Veronika considers humor to be an extremely important ingredient in any audiovisual work and plans to focus on it both in the script and in the animation, which can be a great carrier of humor.