by Helen Barlow
Once again, The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (KVIFF) swung for the fences, complete with a host of fascinating films and a very sad announcement from the great Michael Douglas…
The major European film festivals mostly take place in famous cities like Cannes, Venice, Berlin and San Sebastian. The Czech spa town of Karlovy Vary, situated two hours from Prague in the west Bohemia region, punches well above its weight when it comes to its film festival, which takes place in the height of summer in July. Young viewers flock in droves to KVIFF, which boasts an exceptional party atmosphere and screens world cinema, with an emphasis on films from eastern Europe.
Major international stars attend the festival for tributes, and this month in its 59th edition, Michael Douglas made headlines around the world as he announced he is finished with acting, at least for now. “I’d been working pretty hard for almost 60 years, and I did not want to be one of those people who dropped dead on the set,” the 80-year-old said. “But I say I’m not retired, because if something special came up, I’d go back.” He also presented a newly restored version of Milos Forman’s Oscar-winning One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, which Douglas of course produced, and the film should show up in Australia soon.
Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgård was awarded a Crystal Globe for his contribution to world cinema while he promoted his latest effort, Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value, which may afford him his first Oscar nomination for Best Actor.
Dakota Johnson, Peter Sarsgaard and Vicki Krieps also received tributes. Johnson was plugging The Materialists as well as the upcoming Splitsville, while Krieps stars in the Australia/NZ film Went Up the Hill.
At KVIFF, I was president of the FIPRESCI (press) jury and judged the main competition, the Crystal Globes, which comprised 12 films, 11 of which were world premieres. We awarded our prize to Nathan Ambrosioni’s French film, Out of Love (Les Enfants Vont Bien), which follows a woman (Camille Cottin) who never wanted children but must take care of her young niece and nephew after her sister disappears.
Ambrosioni, now 25, shows his skill in working with both adult and child actors. He had worked with Cottin on his previous film, Toni (2023), and the French star of Call My Agent! is a big fan. Ambrosioni’s first film had been Paper Flags (2018) starring Naomie Merlant, so he had been hugely productive from an early age.
The main jury judging the Crystal Globes included critic Jessica Kiang, who was twice a mentor at the Melbourne International Film Festival’s Critics’ Campus; and Swedish actress/director Tuva Novotny, who is the partner of Alexander Skarsgård. The pair, who have a young son, posed for photographers for the first time before Stellan’s [aka dad] tribute.
The jury also awarded Ambrosioni for Best Director ‘ex-aequo’ with Lithuania’s Vytautas Katkus, who makes his feature debut with The Visitor, which is about a man who travels back to his native Lithuania to sell his parents’ flat only to discover that his bond with his old friends has changed.
The top prize, the Grand Prix, went to Miro Remo’s Czech/Slovak documentary Better Go Mad in the Wild, focusing on the bearded 62-year-old twins, Frantisek and Ondrej Klisík [above, right and left, respectively], who have lived their lives away from it all on their dilapidated farm. The jury called it “a funny valentine to the fading art of being true to yourself,” about men “who in a world as mad as ours, actually might be the sanest people on earth.”
Sadly, Frantisek drowned hours after the announcement of the award. According to Czech media reports, he had been celebrating the film’s win with a friend in the village of Ohrobec and was found dead in a pond adjacent to the village pub the following morning. Incredibly, I had sat behind the exuberant brothers at the film’s premiere, so it’s sad to think that Frantisek has gone in his moment of triumph.
One of my personal favourites and probably the most commercial film of the competition was Norway’s Don’t Call Me Mama directed by Nina Knag and starring Pia Tjelta, who deservedly won the Best Actress prize. She plays a teacher who invites an 18-year-old asylum seeker at a refugee centre where she volunteers to come and live with her and her husband, and they become involved.
The love scenes are sexy and convincing, and we can’t help but feel her obsession with the young man (played by talented handsome newcomer Tarek Zayat, 26, who was born in Denmark to parents of Palestinian heritage). When the relationship is discovered, what will she do? After all, she is married to the town mayor (Kristoffer Joner, recognisable from The Revenant and Mission Impossible: Fallout) and he is up for re-election.
The film is incredibly current as it examines allegiances in an increasingly tough world. Tjelta, one of Norway’s best-known actresses, is the female lead in next year’s Jo Nesbø Harry Hole Netflix series, which should be huge.
Spanish-German actor Alex Brendemuhl took out the Best Actor prize for the Spanish film, When A River Becomes the Sea, a three-hour mostly two-hander between a father and a daughter who has been raped.
Katerina Falbrova received a special mention for another abuse drama, the Czech film Broken Voices, about a 13-year-old singer whose exceptional talent attracts the attention of an admired though sleazy choirmaster as she hopes to become a member of a world-famous girls’ choir in the 1990s.
The Special Jury Prize went to Soheil Beiraghi’s Bidad, an inventive film about a young woman (Sarvin Zabetian) who sings in public when it is forbidden for women to do so in Iran. She is helped by a hipster man with a van (Amir Jadidi, the star of Asghar Farhadi’s A Hero) as she is on the run from the authorities and they quickly fall for each other. An Iranian colleague told me that a character like Jadidi’s has never been seen before in Iranian cinema, so for a major actor to play him is quite something.
Max Walker-Silverman’s Rebuilding, which first screened in Sundance, took out the Karlovy Vary Grand Prize of the Ecumenical Jury. The omni-present Josh O’Connor, after appearing in two Cannes films, stars here as a divorced American rancher who has lost everything in a fire and must rebuild his life as well as his relationship with his daughter. He finds a sense of community with others who have lost everything.
“This austere and visually striking film is a beautiful, life-affirming story that offers hope in the face of hardship, both personal and environmental,” the jury said. The film screens at the Melbourne International Film Festival.
For more on the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, click here.
