The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival has unveiled the official selection for its 59th edition, including new features by Bence Fliegauf, Miro Remo and Ondřej Provazník.
Scroll down for full lineup
The festival, which runs from July 4-July 12 in the Czech spa town, has announced 11 titles for its main Crystal Globe Competition, comprising nine world premieres and two international premieres.
Artistic director Karel Och said that one more title from Iran will be added to the Competition closer to the festival, with the announcement postponed “for the safety of its makers.”
Hungarian director Bence Fliegauf, whose Forest - I See You Everywhere played in Berlin competition in 2021, brings Jimmy Jaguar, about a demon who drifts from soul to soul, making his hosts vessels of revenge on the plains of Hungary.
Catalan director Pere Vilà Barceló, whose La lapidation de Saint Etienne played in Competition in 2012 at Karlovy Vary, world premieres When A River Becomes The Sea, a probe into the soul of a girl who is sexually abused.
Czech-Slovak production Better Go Mad In The Wild is the latest film by Miro Remo, whose Full Throttle played in competition at Karlovy Vary in 2021. It asks whether it’s possible to spend your whole life in a single place, centring on two twins who have made the stubborn decision to do just that.
Also returning to Karlovy Vary competition is Ondřej Provazník with Broken Voices. The psychological drama is about a 13-year-old girl, a gifted novice singer, who is given the chance to become a member of a world-famous girls’ choir, catching the attention of its formidable and much admired choirmaster. Provazník was last the festival in 2019 with Old-Timers.
The lineup also includes Vytautas Katkus The Visitor, about a new father who leaves his family in Norway and travels to his native Lithuania to sell his parents’ flat. Instead of rushing back to his young family to escape loneliness there, he decides to stay, allowing himself to be guided by his solitude. Katkus was the the DoP on Locarno 2024 golden Leopard winner Toxic, and won the Cannes Critics’ Week Next Step prize as a director in 2022 for The Visitor.
US director Max Walker-Silverman’s Rebuilding, starring Josh O’Connor, also makes its international premiere in Competition having world premiered at Sundance earlier this year.
The Competition lineup includes documentary Divia by Dmytro Hreshko, a winner at Sarajevo Film Festival’s CineLink industry platform in 2024. The documentary is about the impact on nature of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and ecologists trying restore fragile Ukrainian ecosystems, even while war continues.
Turkish director Gözde Kura world premieres Cinema Jazireh, set in Afghanistan under the rule of the Taliban, while French director Nathan Ambrosioni world premieres Out Of Love, a portrait of a woman forced to become a mother to children she barely knows.
Norwegian director Nina Knag’s feature debut Don’t Call Me Mama also world premieres. A drama about forbidden love, it’s about a teacher who grows close to an eighteen-year-old refugee. Rounding out the competition is The Luminous Life by Portuguese director João Rosas, about a twenty-four year old who senses that his dream of being a professional musician is falling apart, until fate throws several opportunities his way to take control of his life again.
The jury for the Crystal Globe Competition includes Roma producer Nicolás Celis, Fremont director Babak Jalali, film critic and Berlinale selector Jessica Kiang, Czech actor, writer and director Jiří Mádl and Nordic actress Tuva Novotny.
Meanwhile, Karlovy Vary’s Proxima competition returns for its fourth year with 13 films selected. Open to features from around the world, it is billed as a section for bold works by young filmmakers and experienced auteurs. The Proxima line-up includes 12 world premieres and one international premiere.
The Proxima competition jury comprises Indonesian producer Yulia Evina Bhara, Romanian director Noaz Deshe, Dominican filmmaker Nelson Carlos De Los Santos Arias, Czech screenwriter Jakub Felcman and CAA agent Marissa Frobes.
Special screenings include the European premiere of Paul Andrew Williams’s Dragonfly starring Brenda Blethyn and Andrea Riseborough.
The festival will also include a tribute to 1940s American screen star and method acting pioneer John Garfield, and will hand its President’s Award for Outstanding Contribution to Czech Cinema to editor Jiří Brožek.
Karel Och, artistic director of Karlovy Vary IFF, said: “The 59th Karlovy Vary IFF’s Official Selection offers an exciting display of the diversity of contemporary arthouse cinema. Answering exclusively to their artistic integrity, the filmmakers who have accepted the invitation to premiere their brand new works in Karlovy Vary fearlessly protect the right to challenge expectations, to disrupt stereotypes and to win over hearts and minds with equal intensity. Disregarding budgetary constraints, these filmmakers from countries such as Bangladesh, Lithuania, Norway and Colombia push the boundaries while keeping in mind the necessary connection between a film and its audience.”
Crystal Globe Competition
Cinema Jazireh (Tur-Iran-Bulg-Rom)
Dir: Gözde Kural
Divia (Pol-Ukr-Neth-US)
Dir: Dmytro Hreshko
Out of Love (Fr)
Dir: Nathan Ambrosioni
Jimmy Jaguar (Hun)
Dir: Bence Fliegauf
When a River Becomes the Sea
Dir: Pere Vilà Barceló (Sp)
Better Go Mad in the Wild (Cz-Slovak)
Dir: Miro Remo
Rebuilding (US)
Dir: Max Walker-Silverman
Broken Voices (Cz-Slovak)
Dir: Ondřej Provazník
Don’t Call Me Mama (Nor)
Dir: Nina Knag
The Visitor (Lith-Nor-Swe)
Dir: Vytautas
The Luminous Life (Port-Fr)
Dir: João Rosas
Proxima Competition
The Anatomy of the Horses (Sp-Peru-Col-Fr)
Dir: Daniel Vidal Toche
Before / After (Bel)
Dir: Manoël Dupont
Thus Spoke the Wind (Armenia)
Dir: Maria Rigel
Sand City (Bangladesh)
Dir: Mahde Hasan
Forensics (Col)
Dir: Federico Atehortúa Arteaga
Future Future (Braz)
Dir: Davi Pretto
How Come It’s All Green Out Here? (Ser-Cro-Bulg)
Dir: Nikola Ležaić
The Other Side of Summer (Cz-Cro)
Dir: Vojtěch Strakatý
Action Item (Slovak-Cz-Ger)
Dir: Paula Ďurinová
Rain Fell On the Nothing New (Ger)
Dir: Steffen Goldkamp
Renovation (Lith-Lat-Bel)
Dir: Gabrielė Urbonaitė
TrepaNation (Syria-Ger-Fr)
Dir: Ammar al-Beik
They Come Out of Margo (Greece)
Dir: Alexandros Voulgaris
Special Screenings
Dragonfly (UK)
Dir: Paul Andrew Williams
Duchoň (Slovak-Cz)
Dir: Peter Bebjak
Promise, I’ll Be Fine (Slovak-Cz)
Dir: Katarína Gramatová
All That’s Left of You (Ger-Cyp-Pal-Jor-Greece-Qatar-Saudi)
Dir: Cherien Dabis
Caravan (Cz-Slovak)
Dir: Zuzana Kirchnerová
Summer School, 2001 (Cz-Slovak)
Dir: Dužan Duong
The Czech Film Project (Cz)
Dir: Marek Novák, Mikuláš Novotný
A Second Life (Fr)
Dir: Laurent Slama
Tehran Another View (Iran-UK)
Dir: Ali Behrad
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