Karlovy Vary Reveals Award Winners: ‘Blaga’s Lessons’ Takes Key Prizes

The lessons learned in this pitch-black German-Bulgarian co-production are very grim indeed, a social-realist drama that takes an unexpectedly shocking turn at its harrowing climax. The film’s recent win at Karlovy Vary, where it took the Grand Prix in the Crystal Globe Competition, should give it a welcome boost on the arthouse circuit, but the unwary are warned that Stephan Komandarev’s latest feature packs a punch not seen since Lars Von Trier or Michael Haneke in their provocative prime.

Some of the biggest names in sports are expected to take home a silver statue at this year’s ESPY Awards.  

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent The Locarno Film Festival, Thessaloniki International Film Festival, Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, Rotterdam”s IFFR and the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival have joined forces in a new initiative called Launchpad which aims to nurture budding film professionals. The basic purpose of Launchpad is to facilitate the formative process of selected emerging film professionals working in international sales, marketing, traditional and online distribution, exhibition and programming, and funds and commissions. The idea is to give them facilitated access to a network of European film festivals spread throughout the yearly calendar.

Crystal Globe CompetitionJury members:Dora Bouchoucha, TunisiaPatricia Clarkson, USAJohn Nein, USAOlmo Omerzu, Czech Republic / SloveniaBarry Ward, IrelandGRAND PRIX – CRYSTAL GLOBE (25 000 USD)The financial award is shared equally by the director and producer of the award-winningfilm.“Blaga’s Lessons” (“Urotcite na Blaga”)Directed by: Stephan KomandarevBulgaria, Germany, 2023SPECIAL JURY PRIZE (15 000 USD)The financial award is shared equally by the director and producer of the award-winningfilm.“Empty Nets” (“Toorhaye khali”)Directed by: Behrooz KaramizadeGermany, Iran, 2023BEST DIRECTOR AWARDBabak Jalali for the film “Fremont”USA, 2023BEST ACTRESS AWARDEli Skorcheva for her role in the film “Blaga’s Lessons” (“Urotcite na Blaga”)Bulgaria, Germany, 2023BEST ACTOR AWARDHerbert Nordrum for his role in the film “The Hypnosis” (“Hypnosen”)Sweden, Norway, France, 2023SPECIAL JURY MENTION“Dancing on the Edge of a Volcano”Directed by: Cyril ArisGermany, Lebanon, 2023PRÁVO AUDIENCE AWARD“The Edge of the Blade” (“Une affaire d’honneur”Directed by: Vincent PerezFrance, 2023Proxima CompetitionJury Members:Dana Linssen, NetherlandsMarija Razgutė, LithuaniaŠimon Šafránek, Czech RepublicBarbara Wurm, AustriaMeng Xie, People’s Republic of ChinaPROXIMA GRAND PRIX (15 000 USD)The financial award is shared equally by the director and producer of the award-winningfilm.“Birth”Directed by: Yoo Ji-youngSouth Korea, 2022PROXIMA SPECIAL JURY PRIZE (10 000 USD)The financial award is shared equally by the director and producer of the award-winningfilm.“Guras”Directed by: Saurav RaiIndia, Nepal, 2023SPECIAL JURY MENTION“Brutal Heat” (“Brutální vedro”Directed by: Albert HospodářskýCzech Republic, Slovak Republic, 2023CRYSTAL GLOBE FOR OUTSTANDING

Will Tizard Contributor In Karlovy Vary Film Festival competition entry “We Have Never Been Modern,” Czech director Matej Chlupacek takes on both the dangers of Utopian bubbles and the power of unbending faith in traditional gender concepts. The story, set in a Slovak company town built by a visionary industrialist, takes place on the eve of World War II, as a murder mystery threatens to upset the idealized community. The factory director’s wife Helena, played by Eliska Krenkova, is an aspiring doctor who is soon to give birth. But her rosy future is suddenly darkened by the discovery of the body of a newborn intersex baby in the factory’s courtyard.

Jessica Kiang At a festival the size and stature of the Czech Republic’s Karlovy Vary, new discoveries are a daily occurrence. But it is rare that at festival’s end, one of the most excitingly buzzy emergent names should be that of a filmmaker who died 27 years ago and who has languished in relative obscurity – certainly in the Anglophone world – ever since. And yet here we are, at the tail end of an 11-film Yasuzo Masumura retrospective – the biggest of its kind ever mounted at an international film festival – that has proved, in a word, revelatory.  It’s not just in terms of blowing the dust from this extraordinary, unjustly overlooked filmmaker’s catalog, but also in the broader sense of being an exemplary model for how to connect a vibrant, youthful regional audience to global film history. There is a classic film fan born every minute, but in Karlovy Vary this year, you could feel it happen in real time during the screenings of Masumura’s  “A Cheerful Girl” (1957), “Hoodlum Soldier” (1965), “Spider Tattoo” (1966) and so on.  

The 57th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival has concluded yet another wonderful week of cinematic discoveries. Previously announced awards were given to a variety of contributors to global cinema.

Will Tizard Contributor Bulgarian crime story “Blaga’s Lessons” by Stephan Komandarev scored the top prize and $25,000 at the 57th Karlovy Vary Film Festival on Saturday, capping a week of celebrating art film, stars and bold global work. With sold out screenings ranging from Russell Crowe introducing “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World” to rare Japanese masterworks by Yasuzo Masumura and a tribute to actor Daniela Kolarova, Czech audiences proved once again to be hungry for every kind of film they cannot experience at any other venue. The Crystal Globe competition special jury prize, along with $15,000, went to “Empty Nets,” a German-Iranian gritty love story directed by Behrooz Karamizade.

There’s a fine line between stylized direction and direction that is so fussy that it gets in the way of a film’s actors. Unfortunately for Emma Westenberg’s directorial debut, “You Sing Loud, I Sing Louder,” that’s a line she does not navigate successfully.

The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival’s Eastern Promises industry strand has unveiled the winners of it’s project showcases, which took place at the fest from July 2-4.

Emerging Danish director Amalie-Maria Nielsen has been announced as the first recipient of a new Los Angeles-based scholarship, created in collaboration with the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (KVIFF), talent agency UTA and management company Range Media Partners.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Assel Aushakimova’s dark comedy about journalism in Kazakhstan “Bikechess” has won the Karlovy Vary Film Festival’s Works in Progress award, which runs as part of the festival’s industry section, Eastern Promises. The section is focused on feature film projects from Central and Eastern Europe, the Balkans, the former Soviet Union, the Middle East and North Africa. The Kazakh film follows Dina, who works as a journalist for the national television station. The stories she is asked to report on are becoming increasingly absurd and full of praise for the government. Her love life is limited to a few secret meetings with her married camera­man. Dina looks after her young sis­ter, a lesbian activist, who regularly finds herself in trouble with the au­thorities.

The unseen and the obscene are the subject of Pascal Plante’s disturbingly brilliant psychological horror, which takes an overused genre — the serial killer movie — and an often-misused technique — dark Lynchian surrealism — and somehow alchemizes the two into something new and original. It’s strong meat for sure (the courtroom-drama framing is deceptive, since this is not really a film about justice), but word-of-mouth cult status beckons, and a healthy nightlife on the genre circuit is assured.

EXCLUSIVE: Christine Vachon offered her outlook on some of the industry’s most pressing issues at a keynote masterclass session this afternoon at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.

Will Tizard Contributor In Robert Hloz’s sci-fi feature debut “Restore Point,” second chances are big business. In the year 2041, anyone who has an unnatural death has the right to be brought back to life, provided they’ve dutifully created a backup of their personality called a “restore point.” Naturally, some object to the notion of artificially extending life ad infinitum, wherein the story begins to get complicated. “I wanted to make a sci-fi film since I was a little kid,” Hloz says, “but I would never guess that it will happen to be my debut. I thought maybe third, fourth film.”

Nick Holdsworth Naqqash Khalid always wanted to make films. An English literature graduate of Salford University in Manchester, England, who began his working life as a lecturer in the university’s School of Arts and Media, Khalid dreamed of working with actors to create films that reflect our 21st century experience of a fractured world, dominated by mobile phones and social media, where time no longer seems to follow a linear path. His chance to make his dreams reality came when a script he wrote while still teaching at Salford was picked up by iFeatures – a BBC Film/Creative England/British Film Institute program for debut directors. A development grant in early 2020 enabled him to realize his script “In Camera,” which had its world premiere Saturday in Karlovy Vary Film Festival’s Proxima competition slot (for the Variety review see here).

You know the modern world is in a dark place when even a middle-aged Iranian woman says that things were better in the old days. Indeed, for his feature debut, director Behrooz Karamizade has fashioned an intelligent and thoughtful drama that should travel well in today’s climate of insecurity, offering a fresh perspective on a multiplicity of worldwide issues (trickle-down theory, the gig economy) while adding an especially nuanced subplot exploring the refugee crisis and the mechanics of people-trafficking.  

Brave is the man who will sign up for a real-life father-daughter road movie set the aftermath of an acrimonious divorce, but Ewan McGregor his no regrets about pairing up with his eldest child — by his first wife — for You Sing Loud, I Sing Louder, which screened as a tribute to the actor in Karlovy Vary. Set in a dreamlike American West, and very far removed from the specifics of the McGregors’ own personal situation, it finds a reformed alcoholic dad trying to reconnect with his offspring after collecting her from hospital. She thinks they’re off to visit an artist friend of her father’s, but the truth is that, in a bid to absolve himself of many years’ worth of guilt, he’s taking her to rehab.

The raucous period drama “Firebrand” was the official opening-night film at the 57th annual Karlovy Vary International Film Festival on Friday night in the spa resort town outside Prague, but there was a lot more going on in and around the Grand Hall at the Hotel Thermal than just the on-screen battle between Alicia Vikander’s Catherine Parr and Jude Law’s King Henry VIII. It also included the presentation of awards to Vikander and Russell Crowe, the usual complement of opening-night speeches, an extended dance number that appeared to be performed on ice skates (though it wasn’t on ice but on an artificial surface that mimicked ice but could be walked on safely) and, during breaks and after the movie, complete concerts by the British band Morcheeba and by Crowe’s nine-piece band, Indoor Garden Party.

Given the stories that Russell Crowe was still celebrating his open-air concert at Karlovy Vary’s Thermal Hotel until the small hours of the morning, there was little surprise that the actor was late for his meeting with a group of international journalists. However, the 59-year-old showed no signs of wear and tear, and even graciously insisted the press conference go on past its strict 30-minute cut-off time.