Karlovy Vary To Fete Robin Wright And Christine Vachon, Closing Night Film Revealed

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.

The 57th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (June 30 – July 8) came to a close this evening with an awards ceremony that bestowed two key prizes to contemporary Bulgarian drama Blaga’s Lessons (Urotcite Na Blaga) by director Stephan Komandarev.

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.

Marta Balaga Polish helmer Agnieszka Smoczyńska fought for Tamara Lawrance to be a part of “The Silent Twins,” she said at Karlovy Vary Film Festival. “We had two options: [hire] one actress who plays both characters, but there is no chemistry, or find actual twins, which was not possible. We had Letitia Wright, who was this amazing actress and ‘Black Panther’ star, and then we found Tamara,” she said. The story was inspired by real-life identical twins June and Jennifer Gibbons, who only communicated with each other. “They are not that similar, so what do you do? You make a decision. And I knew she was the one, because it was all about this tension between them.”

Will Tizard Contributor From auditioning for “every John Hughes movie that I never got in” to having Oliver Stone yell at her in a helicopter over her pronunciation of “’Nam,” Robin Wright confesses she’s seen Hollywood from all sides over the years. Speaking to admiring crowds at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival, where Wright is being honored with the festival president’s award, the actor-director-producer recalled a career that began at age 14 — which, in many ways, is really beginning to take off now. Of “The Princess Bride,” the beloved 1987 Rob Reiner sardonic fairytale, she said, “It was not a hit.” Of course, the film made up for low box office scores with VHS sales and is now considered a classic.

Will Tizard Contributor Robin Wright will direct Patricia Clarkson in a new film, “Bingo,” which shares some DNA with the cult classic “Harold and Maude,” she told Variety Friday at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival, where both Wright and Clarkson are guests. The story is a “modernized, beautiful” take on May-December romance (that is, a romantic relationship between two people with a considerable age difference), said the actor, being honored this week at the festival. One thing “Bingo” won’t feature is the dark center that “Harold and Maude,” the 1971 Hal Ashby comedy, featured, said Wright. “I love directing,” Wright said. “I love seeing what actors can do. And pulling it out of them.”

Since producing Todd Haynes’ Sundance-winning drama “Poison” in 1991, Christine Vachon has helped bring some of the most unique and memorable independent films to the big – and small screen.

Winner of the Caméra d’Or for the best first feature film last month at the Cannes Film Festival, writer-director Pham Thien An’s “Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell” is a deeply felt three-hour spiritual odyssey about grief in its many forms.  READ MORE: ‘You Sing Loud, I Sing Louder’ Review: A Vulnerable Ewan McGregor Can’t Save This Father-Daughter Addiction Drama [Karlovy Vary] An impressive tracking shot moves from a nighttime soccer game through a lively street in Saigon before settling on friends having send-off drinks for a member of the group who is forsaking the city for a simple life in the mountains.

Actor Nicolas Cage will be the featured guest at Quebec’s Fantasia International Film Festival, where he will receive the festival’s Cheval Noir Career Achievement Award. 

Boy meets girl is a tale as old as time and one that Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki has visited several times in a career that has spanned forty years, including in his latest romantic tragicomedy “Fallen Leaves.” His 20th feature film is a continuation of what’s been dubbed his Proletariat Trilogy, following “Shadows in Paradise,” “Ariel, “and “The Match Factory Girl.” While each film follows similar plotting, Kaurismäki places a direct emphasis on his unique working-class characters and a humanistic worldview, despite the external harshness of the world around them.  Continue reading ‘Fallen Leaves’ Review: Aki Kaurismäki’s Romantic Tragicomedy Finds Love In A Hopeless Place [Karlovy Vary] at The Playlist.

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.

Marta Balaga Before Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie,” there was “Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story.” “Mattel did pay a visit to our office,” said acclaimed producer Christine Vachon at Karlovy Vary Film Festival. Back in 1987, she was helping out on the Todd Haynes and Cynthia Schneider-produced movie. The now-banned film, dedicated to Carpenter’s tragic life and her untimely passing, featured dolls instead of actors. “Todd bought all these toys in garage sales. There were Barbies, but also all these Barbie rip-offs, so he was able to prove to Mattel that it was off brand,” Vachon said in conversation with Variety international features editor Leo Barraclough.

Before Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie captured the zeitgeist with their Warner Bros-backed Barbie, the popular doll was the subject of a much darker indie pic directed by Todd Haynes.

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.

Marta Balaga Once again, 10 promising directors are making their way to Karlovy Vary Film Festival thanks to European Film Promotion’s Future Frames – Generation NEXT of European Cinema initiative, ready to burst onto the international film scene. “Over the past few years, we have established a reliable label with Future Frames,” says Sonja Heinen, EFP’s managing director, adding that the goals have remained the same: spotlighting talent, creating visibility for the emerging directors, and helping them access the market. “Being selected gives them a certain stamp of approval. They get a platform to exchange and experience, and are equipped with coaching which they can use later in their career,” adds Nora Goldstein, project director.  

Alicia Vikander got the support of her husband Michael Fassbender while being honored at the 2023 Karlovy Vary Film Festival.

Will Tizard Contributor From indoor ice skating feats to Russell Crowe rocking the crowd, the 57th edition of the Karlovy Vary Film Festival has launched with all its unconventional charisma intact. Audiences who had to weather a downpour clearly showed no signs of dampened spirits as they cheered the fest’s opening gala dancers on ice skates, then rose to their feet to applaud guests Crowe and Alicia Vikander, both of whom accepted honors for their robust range of film work. Vikander, in accepting the award of fest president Jiri Bartoska, said she was moved to be celebrated in the Czech Republic, where her international career first took off with the 2012 shoot of “A Royal Affair.”

Self-seriousness is a common trait in the world of European cinema, but the opening night of the 57thKarlovy Vary International Film Festival was a wholly playful affair, starting with the most unexpected sight of a troupe of acrobatic ice-skating showgirls spinning and whirling through fake snow and dry ice. MC Marek Eben followed in a similarly feelgood vein, with a dryly witty monologue that touched on current affairs in the Czech Republic and the wider world without getting too heavily into the politics. A “surprise” appearance by festival stalwart Jiří Bartoška, whose attendance was initially in doubt, occasioned the first standing ovation of the night.

As tensions rise in Hollywood over an imminent update on SAG-AFTRA’s negotiations with the studios, thousands of miles east, the Czech spa town of Karlovy Vary is gearing up for its annual influx of industry insiders, curious film fans, and stars.