The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (July 4-12) has unveiled its preliminary programme.

Among the slate of films to screen in the main competition will be two of this year's local hits, Jan Hrebejk's Pupendo (pictured) and Juraj Nvota's Czech-Slovak co-production Cruel Joys.

The Festival has also announced it will honour acclaimed Czech director Jiri Menzel (who directed such new-wave classics as Larks On A String and Closely Watched Trains, the winner of the 1968 Best Foreign Language Oscar) with an award for Outstanding Artistic Contribution to World Cinema.

Among the jury members will be Czech actress Anna Geislerová (The Ride, England!), while last year's winner of the fest's Grand Prix, Petr Zelenka (Year Of The Devil) will direct the festival's trailer.

The festival will also pay homage to Japanese writer and director Yasujiro Ozu with a retrospective, and will include a special focus on films from the Baltic nations.

Organizers are putting together a tribute to Joseph Strick, known for his adaptations of the work of James Joyce (such as 1967's Ulysses and 1977's Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man), on the occasion of the director's 80th birthday. French cinema verite director Maurice Pialat (Under Satan's Sun, 1987), who died earlier this year, will also be honored.

Among those films screening in the festival's East of the West section are the Iraqi film Life, directed by Jan Rosebiani, and the Polish psychological drama Edi, which won the Fipresci prize at this year's Berlin International Film Festival.

The Karlovy Vary fest, now in its 38th year, has become known as Central Europe's most important festival, with a focus on films from Eastern Europe and Asia.