Paolo Gumabao, Sara Sandeva warm up in ‘Spring in Prague’
A holiday flirtation, a winter reunion, and a love story carrying the weight of history. That’s the premise of Spring in Prague, a romantic movie that also strolls in, holding hands with politics, faith, and memory.
The new film from Borracho Films Production places a chance encounter between a Filipino resort owner and a Czech model against the long shadow of Europe’s Cold War past. Directed by Lester Dimaranan, it stars Paolo Gumabao as Alfonso “Alfie” Mucho, easygoing and grounded, and Sara Sandeva as Maruska “Marie” Ruzicka, a woman trying to slip free from the reach of a powerful father.
They meet in the Philippines, where sun, sea, and borrowed time allow feelings to grow quickly. But the warmth does not last. Marie is summoned back to Prague under pretenses, her return engineered by a father who exaggerates her mother’s illness and later confines her to their home. What begins as romance becomes separation by force.
Borracho Films founder Ferdinand Topacio said that the story was never meant to be just about two people. He frames the lovers as living metaphors shaped by history. Alfie represents a democratic Philippines. Marie is the daughter of a man who once stood close to power in a communist state.
Topacio draws directly from the Prague Spring of 1968, when Czechoslovakia’s brief push toward freedom was crushed by Soviet tanks. The suppression, he said, shaped a national memory that would later lead to the country’s split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
“It’s not just a love story,” Topacio said. “If you look at the dialogue, it goes beyond two people talking. There is a clear political subtext. It contrasts freedom and democracy with authoritarian rule.”
That contrast becomes literal when Alfie, spurred by a brief and unsanctioned phone call, flies to Prague in the dead of winter. He arrives with no plan, little money, and only the belief that what they shared mattered enough to risk everything. Seasons shift as the film unfolds, a symbolic journey from warmth to cold, from hope to confinement.
Gumabao said one of the challenges was showing how cultural differences shape the relationship. Alfie’s openness clashes with Marie’s guarded world, where obedience and silence are expected. The tension is quiet but persistent.
against the lingering shadows
of Europe’s Cold War past
Shot across Puerto Galera, Tagaytay, Manila, and Prague, the film uses place as emotional texture. Tropical calm gives way to cobblestone streets and iron-grey skies.
A subtle spiritual thread runs through the story with the Santo Niño de Praga, a devotion that mirrors the characters’ search for protection, meaning, and grace.
The project is personal for Topacio, who conceived the film after visiting the Santo Niño shrine in Prague. He describes it as a passion project and a way of giving back to an industry he has loved since childhood. He calls it part of his legacy, something that will outlast him.
Dimaranan, working from a script by Eric Ramos, said the film deliberately avoids spectacle. The romance is old-fashioned, patient, and uninterested in grand gestures. Emotion is allowed to surface on its own.
The experience of doing the film was transformative for Gumabao. It was his first time shooting in Europe, and Prague, he said, felt unreal.
“I’m used to doing sexy and contravida roles. I teased people in my previous roles. But this role is quite challenging, the role pushed me beyond what I expected of myself,” he said.
Produced by Borracho Films, Spring in Prague also serves as a symbolic nod to 50 years of diplomatic ties between the Philippines and the Czech Republic, using cinema as a quiet bridge between cultures.
The film screens on Jan. 19 at Gateway Cinema 12, ahead of its nationwide theatrical release on Feb. 4.
