– The largest Czech film gathering brings together returning auteurs and emerging talents in a line-up that probes family fractures, historical trauma, migration and political pressure
Only Beautiful Things to Look At by Ivan Ostrochovský
The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (KVIFF, 3-11 July) is turning 60 this year, and the Czech spa town will not only host the festival’s 60th edition, but will also commemorate the 80th anniversary of its inaugural season. As executive director Kryštof Mucha notes, the roots laid down after World War II have allowed the event to survive political pressures and transform into an internationally recognised showcase. A photographic exhibition tracing the event’s history and a special red‑carpet redesign will accompany the festivities.
But, as always, it is the films that take centre stage. This year’s Crystal Globe Competition is defined by a raft of returning auteurs and emerging voices, many of whom probe family legacies, systemic failures and the scars of history. Reflecting the festival’s mission to bridge the artistic and the political, the 12 world‑premiering titles draw from Central and Eastern Europe while also embracing stories from Latin America and Asia.
Homegrown talent anchors the Crystal Globe Competition line-up. Czech director Šimon Holý, whose lo-fi chamber pieces (Mirrors in the Dark, And Then There Was Love…, Hello, Welcome) have repeatedly centred on women’s lives, returns with the Franco-Czech-Slovak co-production Chica Checa (see the news), following a widowed village postwoman who, while carrying out her mother’s last wish, reconnects with her son and awakens long-dormant desires. Award-winning Slovak filmmaker Ivan Ostrochovský (Servants) confronts the state-sanctioned sterilisation of Romany women in 1980s Czechoslovakia in the drama Only Beautiful Things to Look At (see the news), while Swiss director Jan-Eric Mack’s A Happy Family and Iranian-German filmmaker Nader Saeivar’s Hijamat turn their attention to social services, migration and religious taboos in contemporary Central Europe. The 2019 Crystal Globe winners Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov (The Father) return to the main competition with Black Money for White Nights, a tragicomic portrait of Bulgarian pensioners whose long-saved holiday fund disappears when their travel agency collapses during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Miroslav Terzić, whose Berlinale-laurelled drama Stitches brought him international acclaim, will premiere 3 Weeks After, a claustrophobic drama in which a class trip spirals into bullying and grief after a suicide, while Danish debutant Mads Mengel probes unhealed family wounds in The Guest, about new parents whose seaside celebration is disrupted by the arrival of an estranged mother. Female perspectives and memories of violence also reverberate throughout the section: Valeria Sarmiento explores the fine line between memory and repression in Behind the Rain, Cypriot filmmaker Tonia Mishiali (Pause) follows an asylum-seeking Senegalese teenager and a recovering addict in the warm-hearted The Lion at My Back (see the news), and Myanmar’s Aung Phyoe makes his feature debut with Fruit Gathering, a tender love story between two female textile workers.
The festival’s Proxima strand continues to champion formally daring storytelling and porous boundaries between fiction and documentary. Among this year’s world premieres, Slovak siblings Anna and Šimon Domček present 33 Steps, a docu-fiction mosaic of everyday moments, memories and dreams centred on a traumatised man awaiting the release of the assailant who left him with a traumatic brain injury, while Slovak debutante Martina Buchelová’s Lover, Not a Fighter (see the news), the winner of the Cineuropa Work in Progress Award, captures the improvised verve of a sun-drenched summer as a recovering addict tumbles into love. Belgian artist Isabelle Tollenaere’s Paris Paris invites three immigrants from China, Congo and Palestine to reflect on exile and belonging inside a replica of the French capital, underlining Proxima’s appetite for hybrid forms. Among the European debuts, Greek-German filmmaker Efthimis Kosemund Sanidis, whose shorts have travelled to Locarno, Sarajevo and Venice, will premiere A Whole Person Almost, about a man stranded on an island who uncovers his father’s hidden past as power cuts and spasms disturb his reality. Italian filmmaker Giovanni C Lorusso (A Man Fell) will reveal Homo Sive Natura, a meditative portrait of a businessman whose encounter with an indigenous Cambodian community becomes a confrontation with neo-colonial guilt, while Croatian filmmaker Mate Ugrin’s debut, Petty Thieves (see the news), follows a loner and a seasonal worker whose partnership in petty theft grows into an unexpected bond. On the more experimental side, Mexican director Axel Bertha’s Against Nature veers into the mystical, Spanish-Argentinian filmmaker Francisco Marise’s Truck Driver finds poetry in the pauses of a road trip, and Rosa Friedrich’s playful hybrid My Friend the Porn Star begins with a friend’s plan to make an artistic porn film before AI, a dominatrix, trans women and other collaborators complicate ideas of desire and self-representation. The section is rounded off by Michele Fiascaris’s noir-inflected Rain Catcher, about a voyeuristic photographer whose life unravels when a mysterious woman appears in his pictures, and Yashasvi Juyal’s The Ink-Stained Hand and the Missing Thumb.
The Special Screenings section captures a broad stylistic and thematic range of domestic filmmakers, from Bára – Diary of a Rockstar, Helena Třeštíková’s latest time-lapse documentary portrait, dedicated to Czech music icon Bára Basiková, and A Pint of Ink, Ester Geislerová’s intimate film about her father, Japanologist, translator and calligrapher Petr Geisler, to If Pigeons Turned to Gold, Pepa Lubojacki’s Berlinale-awarded personal documentary about family, addiction and homelessness. The section also includes City of Fathers, Zdeněk Tyc’s existential father-son drama; Bohdan Karásek’s conversational mumblecore-influenced Everything as It Should Be; and Tomasz Mielnik’s absurd medieval comedy Gregorius, the Chosen One, based on Thomas Mann’s final novel. Meanwhile, the international strand stretches from Maryam Ataei and Hossein Keshavarz’s Tehran-set The Friend’s House Is Here, made in the aftermath of the June War in Iran, and Rebekah Fortune’s family drama Learning to Breathe Underwater, to Ivan Pavljutskov’s Baltic coming-of-age debut Morten, Mark Cousins’ The Story of Documentary Film – 1980s, Jana Hojdová’s portrait of cinematographer Robert Richardson and Yuliia Hontaruk’s Ukrainian war documentary To Die to Live, filmed over 12 years.
Here is the full competition line‑up for the 60th KVIFF:
Crystal Globe Competition
Black Money for White Nights – Kristina Grozeva, Petar Valchanov (Bulgaria/Greece)
Chica Checa – Šimon Holý (Czech Republic/France/Slovak Republic)
Five Years, Four Months – Esteban Hoyos García, Juan Miguel Gelacio Ramírez (Colombia/USA)
Pipes – Karim Kassem (Lebanon)
A Happy Family – Jan‑Eric Mack (Switzerland)
The Guest – Mads Mengel (Denmark)
The Lion at My Back – Tonia Mishiali (Cyprus/Luxembourg/Greece)
Only Beautiful Things to Look At – Ivan Ostrochovský (Slovak Republic/Czech Republic/Hungary)
Fruit Gathering – Aung Phyoe (Myanmar/France/Czech Republic)
Hijamat – Nader Saeivar (Germany)
Behind the Rain – Valeria Sarmiento (Chile)
3 Weeks After – Miroslav Terzić (Serbia/Bulgaria)
Proxima Competition
Against Nature – Axel Bertha (Mexico)
Lover, Not a Fighter – Martina Buchelová (Slovak Republic)
33 Steps – Anna Domček, Šimon Domček (Slovak Republic/Czech Republic)
Rain Catcher – Michele Fiascaris (Italy/UK)
My Friend the Porn Star – Rosa Friedrich (Austria)
The Ink‑Stained Hand and the Missing Thumb – Yashasvi Juyal (India)
A Whole Person Almost – Efthimis Kosemund‑Sanidis (Greece/Bulgaria/Germany/Cyprus/Romania)
Homo Sive Natura – Giovanni C Lorusso (Italy)
Truck Driver – Francisco Marise (Spain/Argentina)
Paris Paris – Isabelle Tollenaere (Belgium)
Incinerator – Shuntaro Uchida (Japan)
Petty Thieves – Mate Ugrin (Croatia/Germany/France)
Special Screenings
The Friend’s House Is Here – Maryam Ataei, Hossein Keshavarz (Iran/USA)
The Story of Documentary Film – 1980s – Mark Cousins (UK)
Learning to Breathe Underwater – Rebekah Fortune (UK/Netherlands/Ireland)
A Pint of Ink – Ester Geislerová (Czech Republic/Slovak Republic)
Robert Richardson: The White Devil – Jana Hojdová (Czech Republic/USA)
To Die to Live – Yuliia Hontaruk (Ukraine/Latvia/Slovak Republic)
Everything as It Should Be – Bohdan Karásek (Czech Republic)
A Report for Minerva 2 – Miroslav Krobot, Lubomír Smékal (Czech Republic)
If Pigeons Turned to Gold – Pepa Lubojacki (Czech Republic/Slovak Republic)
Gregorius, the Chosen One – Tomasz Mielnik (Czech Republic/Poland/Romania)
Morten – Ivan Pavljutskov (Estonia/Lithuania)
Bára – Diary of a Rockstar – Helena Třeštíková (Czech Republic)
City of Fathers – Zdeněk Tyc (Czech Republic/Slovak Republic/Poland)
