Liquid Gold

Biography

Lenka Szántó is a Czech TV producer, screenwriter, and former journalist. As a creative producer at TV Nova, she develops and oversees projects from comedies to spy thrillers, with a focus on true stories. She wrote Metanol (2018), developed Morning Glow (2022), and produced Extractors (2023), VOYO’s top title of the year. Her credits also include What Haunts Us and Murders in a Shire. She values authenticity, clarity, and emotionally rich characters.

Producer's note

The Most Natural Story We Could Tell

We come from the country with the highest per-capita beer consumption in the world. Here, beer is not just mother's milk; it is culture, ritual and part of national identity. That is why we keep returning to the same question: how is it possible that no one has yet told an adventure story about how the most famous beer in the world actually came into being? For us, it is the most natural thing in the world. And the more we looked into it, the less it resembled a heritage story. Pilsner was not born in harmony. It was born out of poisoning, public humiliation, unrest and murder, and thanks to people who had every reason to stop one another. This is our saga.
TV Nova is the largest commercial media house in the Czech Republic and has scheduled the series in prime time on its main channel. Bionaut brings the international dimension: an International Emmy for the series #martyisdead, Czech Lion awards for the series Svět pod hlavou (Shadow of the Fern), the Czech Film Critics' Award for the series #annaismissing, and two decades of co-production experience. A market-leading broadcaster with a guaranteed prime-time slot, and a producer with an International Emmy Award.

Profile

Bionaut (Prague, est. 1999) produces fiction, doc and animation for cinema and TV, with sister companies Raketa (Slovakia) and Kosmonaut (Poland). Credits include Walking Too Fast (5 Czech Lions), Mammon (HBO), #martyisdead (International Emmy 2020) and How to Divorce During the War (Sundance 2026).