Karlovy Vary Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

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.  

Alissa Simon Film CriticDo you ever think about the narrative that governs your everyday life? You certainly will after watching the idiosyncratic German tragicomedy “The Ordinaries,” which fizzes with remake potential. For her debut feature, premiering in the main competition at Karlovy Vary, German director-writer Sophie Linnenbaum and her co-scripter Michael Fetter Nathansky create a high-concept, meta-cinema world that uses the process of filmmaking to deconstruct the power of the narratives and how they determine our thoughts and actions.The basic idea for this world came early on to Linnenbaum, with the short “[Out of Fra]me” (2016), made while she attended Film University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf.

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.

Will Tizard ContributorDespite an apparent last-minute sense of concern by Karlovy Vary fest organizers over international press coverage of Johnny Depp and his ongoing legal battle with ex-wife Amber Heard over domestic abuse allegations, the rocker/actor/producer made his appearances without much fuss and introduced the docu he co-produced, “Crock of Gold: A Few Rounds with Shane MacGowan” to welcoming crowds on Friday.Depp’s other project at the Czech fest, the Japan-set thriller “Minamata,”

Leo Barraclough International Features EditorKarlovy Vary Intl. Film Festival, the leading cinema event in Central and Eastern Europe, will honor American actor, director, and writer Ethan Hawke, who will receive the Festival President’s Award at its 55th edition, taking place Aug.

Emilio Mayorga Few producers in Spain have earned more festival prizes than Barcelona-based Luis Miñarro, whose credits range from Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Cannes Palme d’Or laureate  “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives” to Karlovy Vary top prize winner “The Mosquito Net” and Rotterdam Tiger Award winner “Finisterrae.”So Miñarro’s support for Spaniard Ainhoa Rodríguez’s debut feature, Rotterdam Tiger contender “Destello bravío” – which he’s boarded as a co-producer in