A young man reads from a manifesto. He’s just slaughtered countless people in a home for the elderly with an automatic rifle.
02.07.2022 - 00:01 / variety.com
Marta Balaga As its 56th edition – running July 1-9 – kicks off, Karlovy Vary Intl. Film Festival is ready to party like it’s 2019.“We can’t predict how many people will come, as some still don’t want to travel, but it’s supposed to be as close to [pre-pandemic] 2019 as possible,” says artistic director Karel Och, noting the audience is still one of the festival’s biggest assets.It’s their enthusiasm for cinema that has “enchanted even big Hollywood stars,” echoes president Jiří Bartoška, hoping for a great atmosphere in Karlovy Vary.But there have been significant changes at the festival, starting with the death of the longtime artistic advisor and former artistic director Eva Zaoralová in March.
“When it happened, it was just like when Bowie died — certain people you just consider immortal,” says Och. The festival will celebrate Zaoralová with an exhibition of photographs and a screening of her favorite film, Federico Fellini’s “La Strada.” “It was a long, beautiful, rich life connected to cinema and we will try to reflect that.
She sent a letter to Fellini once. He replied and invited her to Rome, to visit him on set.
She never did, which was her regret.” The festival will also replace its East of the West sidebar with the Proxima competition. No longer bound by geographical restrictions, it will showcase the work of “filmmakers waiting to be discovered as well as renowned directors seeking to redefine their work,” it was announced.“People have always appreciated our efforts to help the filmmakers from our region.
A young man reads from a manifesto. He’s just slaughtered countless people in a home for the elderly with an automatic rifle.
Shot in lush super 16mm, Jake Paltrow’s “June Zero” takes a unique look back at the execution of Adolf Eichmann after his trial in Israel during the early 1960s. Told in a triptych, the film follows 13-year-old Libyan immigrant David (Noam Ovadia), who claims to have worked on the oven where Eichmann’s corpse was incinerated.
The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival’s Eastern Promises industry strand has unveiled the winners of the five project showcases taking place within its auspices from July 3-5.
Leo Barraclough International Features EditorYemeni film “The Burdened,” directed by Amr Gamal, won the Works in Progress Post-Production Development Award in Eastern Promises, the industry section of the Karlovy Vary Intl. Film Festival on Tuesday.The story, written by Gamal and Mazen Refaat, centers on Ahmed, Isra’a and their three children in Aden, Yemen in 2019.
A new Dark Age has come to Earth after man-made viruses destroyed its ecosystems and killed most animals, including humans. Of those who survived, the rich live in comfort and rule from walled-off citadels.
The spectre of the war in Ukraine loomed large at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (KVIFF) on Tuesday as it hosted the annual Work in Progress showcase of the Ukrainian Odesa International Film Festival (OIFF).
The camera pans over folds of lush blue satin fabric. Quickly fingers enter the frame, caressing it with great care.
Jake Paltrow directs and co-writes June Zero, an unusual account of the death of Adolf Eichmann that’s screening at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.
Will Tizard ContributorCzech screenwriter and director Beata Parkanova says she had a rich mine of real-life characters and scenes to draw on in crafting her second feature, the retro drama “The Word,” competing in the Karlovy Vary Intl. Film Festival’s main event, the Crystal Globe race.The filmmaker behind “Moments,” a drama that competed in KVIFF’s East of the West section in 2018, is screening her sophomore feature at Karlovy Vary in what artistic director Karel Och calls a “masterfully told and highly original intimate drama” built around the family of notary Vaclav Vojir, “a small-town moral authority,” and his fiercely loyal wife, Vera.The story follows its protagonists through a political and societal ordeal in the summer of 1968, with nuanced performances by Martin Finger and Gabriela Mikulková.
bombastico.But then, this was, in every sense, a big night. Once the film let out, the thousand-strong crowd gathered outside Karlovy Vary’s main site for a free show that featured Czech band MIG 21, a 60-piece orchestra, 20 choir singers and two rather saucy dancers, and that concluded – as only such a statement could – with a fireworks display.
Will Tizard ContributorWhen Liev Schreiber first encountered how ordinary Ukrainians on the ground are handling the vast and urgent crises brought on by the Russian war, he says, one thing was clear to him immediately: “They were doing all the work.”Speaking about his non-profit BlueCheck Ukraine at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival on Saturday, the actor/writer/producer explained this realization is central to his newly organized efforts to help.Schreiber was also motivated to found BlueCheck Ukraine after hearing many Americans express doubt about whether funds donated to the war relief effort would reach those most in need. Westerners are skeptical about transparency in Eastern Europe, he learned, likely because of the region’s history of corruption and waste.
While Covid cases begin to surge again in Hollywood, it’s a different story nearly 6,000 miles away as the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival kicked off with a bang on Friday night. The prominent Central European festival showed no sign that the pandemic was going to mar yet another edition of the much-loved event as delegates packed into the Hotel Thermal’s Grand Hall for its opening night ceremony and opening night film Superheroes, from Italian director Paolo Genovese.
Will Tizard ContributorThe Karlovy Vary Intl. Film Festival roared back to life Friday following the disruption of the pandemic years.And the opening ceremony kicked off with a bit of digital disruption: the audience was invited to pull out their mobile phones and follow festival dancers online before they burst onto the stage with a real-life fire show.The Czech Republic’s main event in the art film world, the festival this year screens some 132 narrative and doc films and has become a hub for filmmakers, producers and regional orgs.But even as enthusiastic, unmasked crowds cheered on the launch of the nine-day event at the iconic 70s-tastic Hotel Thermal, a sense of loss pervaded the proceedings.
Good afternoon Insider squad. Max Goldbart here back from Glastonbury with all the news, analysis and sunburn you need as we look back on the final week of June. Read on.
Eastern Promises, the popular industry strand of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, has spent the last two years relegated to an online only event due to Covid-19, but the upcoming seventh edition of the event is now gearing up for what it hopes to be a vintage year as it returns in a physical capacity on Sunday, June 3.
As the 56th edition of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (KVIFF) is about to kick off on Friday, there will be plenty to discuss at this year’s event in the picturesque Czech spa town. The prominent Central European festival, which is returning to its usual early July slot after last year’s edition was delayed to August because of the pandemic, will see 33 films from five continents screen across its three sections – the Crystal Globe Competition, the Special Screenings section and its new competition, Proxima, which replaces the former East of the West section.
The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (July 1-9) will open this Friday with Italian director Paolo Genovese’s relationship drama Superheroes and close with George Miller’s Cannes title Three Thousand Years of Longing, it has revealed in a final pre-kick-off announcement.
Leo Barraclough International Features EditorPaolo Genovese’s “Superheroes” will be the opening film of the 56th Karlovy Vary Intl. Film Festival on July 1, while George Miller’s “Three Thousand Years of Longing” will close the festival on July 9.“Superheroes” is a romantic film that briefly introduces us to the carousel of joys and fears of a couple brought together by chance.
The Czech Republic’s Karlovy Vary International Film Festival has defended its decision to invite a Russian film to its 56th edition, in spite of promises that it would not welcome Russia state-backed films due to the war in Ukraine.