Karlovy Vary Film Festival to Honor Geoffrey Rush, Benicio Del Toro

A young man reads from a manifesto. He’s just slaughtered countless people in a home for the elderly with an automatic rifle.

Clement Virgo’s adaptation of a coming-of-age novel set in Toronto’s hip hop scene is bound for the Toronto International Film Festival.

The Clement Virgo directed movie Brother will make its world premiere at the 47th Toronto International Film Festival which runs Thursday, Sept. 8  through Sunday, Sept. 18.

The Locarno Film Festival has announced the full line-up and juries for its 75th edition, which is due to unfold August 3-13.

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.

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.

Will Tizard ContributorMilan Kundera’s first novel, “The Joke,” won him critical praise and set the tone for a robust career in the spring of 1967, debuting just in time to catch the rising tide of freedom of expression that would reach its peak with the Prague Spring movement just a year later. Jaromil Jires crafted a screen adaptation of the book, in collaboration with the writer, which became one of the iconic films of the Czech New Wave.The digital restoration of the film, part of the Karlovy Vary Film Festival’s program of preserving and promoting classic films, alongside the Czech National Film Archive, brings a crisp new copy of the film to audiences this summer.

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.

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.

Leo Barraclough International Features EditorTomasz Wasilewski’s “Fools” (Głupcy) has debuted its trailer ahead of its world premiere at Karlovy Vary Film Festival in the Proxima Competition. World sales are being handled by Jan Naszewski’s New Europe Film Sales.Wasilewski won the best script award for “United States of Love” at the Berlin Film Festival in 2016, and the East of West Award at Karlovy Vary in 2013 for “Floating Skyscrapers.”“Fools” follows Marlena and Tomasz, hidden away from the world in a small seaside town, who have been in a happy relationship for many years.

The 2022 American Black Film Festival (ABFF) today announced the Best of the ABFF Award winners.

.A 20th Anniversary screening of Todd Haynes’ “Far from Heaven” will take place, with Haynes, Julianne Moore, and producer Christine Vachon in person.“I’m incredibly proud of the work our programming team has done to craft a lineup that celebrates the history of the LGBTQIA+ community and the art we create, and that also spotlights innovative new work that will pave the way for 40 more years of spectacular, groundbreaking queer cinema,” said Outfest’s Director of Festival Programming, Mike Dougherty. The 11-day festival will host the Los Angeles premiere of Sundance Audience Award winner “Girl Picture,” as well as Sundance favorites “Sirens,” about a female thrash metal band from Lebanon; “Mars One,” a family drama from Brazil that centers a love story between two women; and Chae Joynt’s “Framing Agnes,” starring Zackary Drucker, Angelica Ross, Silas Howard.World premieres include “Stay on Board: The Leo Baker Story,” a doc from Drew Barrymore’s Flower Films and Pulse Films that tells the story of competitive skating icon Leo Baker, who in 2020 resigned from the U.S.

Geoffrey Rush and Benicio Del Toro will be honored with career awards at the 56th edition of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (KVIFF), running July 1-9 against the backdrop of the picturesque Czech Republic spa town.

Christopher Vourlias For the first edition of the Evia Film Project, a new initiative launched by the organizers of the Thessaloniki Film Festival, the festival’s industry arm, Agora, hosted a series of events looking to bring both environmentally focused films and sustainable film production to the fore. The program was designed to help revitalize Greece’s second-largest island, which was hit by a devastating series of wildfires last summer.Speaking to Variety ahead of the festival, Agora head Yianna Sarri stressed the importance of getting the global film community to rethink its ways of doing business in order to make the industry more environmentally friendly.

Directors Amandine Fredon and Benjamin Massoubre take home the top prize for their animated film Little Nicholas–Happy as Can Be at the annual Annecy International Animation Film Festival in France. 

Christopher Vourlias When Dumitrana Lupu took over as the head of the Transilvania Film Festival’s industry program earlier this year, she was tasked with a two-fold mission of continuing to discover and boost emerging talents from the host country, as well as ensuring that the Romanian festival remains a vital meeting place for filmmakers from Southeastern Europe and the surrounding region.To do so, she and the organizing team revamped some of TIFF’s industry sections while ensuring that long-running programs provide continuity for a festival that unspools its 21st edition from June 17 – 26.With a focus on the Black Sea region and its neighboring countries, the Transilvania Pitch Stop has emerged as one of the leading co-production and co-financing platforms for the region’s filmmakers. Among the films supported by the TPS since its inception in 2014 include “Apples,” by Greece’s Christos Nikou, which opened the Horizons sidebar of the Venice Film Festival; “The Man Who Surprised Everyone,” a Horizons prize winner from Russia’s Alexey Chupov; and “La Civil,” by Teodora Ana Mihai, which won the Prize of Courage in the Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard sidebar last year.

Leo Barraclough International Features EditorKarlovy Vary Intl. Film Festival’s industry section, Eastern Promises, has unveiled its lineup of 35 film projects, which will be showcased during the Works in Progress, Works in Development – Feature Launch, First Cut+ Works in Progress and Odesa International Film Festival Works in Progress presentations.