56th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival

07/01/2022

Festival Reviews

A Far Shore

by Deborah Young | Jul 12, 2022 | Festivals, Karlovy Vary, Karlovy Vary 2022, Spotlight

Japanese director Masaaki Kudo turns a compassionate eye on a 17-year-old nightclub hostess with a toddler, sent skidding toward prostitution in a heart-felt story set on Okinawa.

June Zero

by Stephen Dalton | Jul 12, 2022 | Featured, Festivals, Karlovy Vary, Karlovy Vary 2022

Director Jake Paltrow’s multi-character drama about the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, ‘June Zero’ is a bold but muddled patchwork.

My Love Affair With Marriage

by Oris Aigbokhaevbolo | Jul 11, 2022 | Featured, Festivals, Karlovy Vary, Karlovy Vary 2022

Signe Baumane’s animated feature is so brilliant in presenting a female perspective on love and marriage that you forgive its need to tell us the science behind romance.

In Broad Daylight

by Ben Nicholson | Jul 11, 2022 | Festivals, Karlovy Vary, Karlovy Vary 2022, Spotlight

Ambiguity abounds in Emmanuel Tardif’s elusive Québécois drama about a family’s self-imposed isolation after an unexpected event and the spreading fractures in their fragile status quo.

Pamfir

by Ben Nicholson | Jul 10, 2022 | Festivals, Karlovy Vary, Spotlight

Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk’s debut is a propulsive drama employing folkloric elements and mythic overtones in its portrayal of a man trying to navigate a provincial criminal underworld.

You Have to Come and See It

by Deborah Young | Jul 10, 2022 | Featured, Festivals, Karlovy Vary, Karlovy Vary 2022

Spanish director Jonas Trueba reunites his favorite actors for a 64-minute chamber piece, in a relaxed, engaging, free-wheeling exchange of moods and ideas between two 30-something couples.

Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power

by Stephen Dalton | Jul 8, 2022 | Featured, Festivals, Karlovy Vary, Karlovy Vary 2022

Director Nina Menkes attacks cinema’s long history of sexism, including some canonical male directors, in her timely and enjoyably polemical filmed lecture ‘Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power’.

The Trees

by Ben Nicholson | Jul 7, 2022 | Festivals, Karlovy Vary, Verdict Shorts

The nature of loss both personal and planetary become intertwined in Ramzi Bashour’s mordantly comic drama about a man returning home after his father’s death.

Summer with Hope

by Deborah Young | Jul 7, 2022 | Festivals, Karlovy Vary, Karlovy Vary 2022

Canadian-based filmmaker Sadaf Foroughi (‘Ava’, 2017) revisits the theme of teenage rebellion in middle-class Iran in a drama full of danger and nervous energy.

Rubikon

by Stephen Dalton | Jul 7, 2022 | Featured, Festivals, Karlovy Vary, Karlovy Vary 2022

Austrian director Magdalena Lauritsch’s sci-fi eco-disaster movie ‘Rubikon’ is an admirably ambitious but dramatically flawed debut.

A Provincial Hospital

by Ben Nicholson | Jul 6, 2022 | Festivals, Karlovy Vary, Karlovy Vary 2022

The Covid ward of a hospital in a town in western Bulgaria is the subject of this clear-eyed observational documentary about the perseverance of both its staff and patients.

Like a Fish on the Moon

by Deborah Young | Jul 6, 2022 | Festivals, Karlovy Vary, Karlovy Vary 2022

Iranian director Dornaz Hajiha pushes maternal and paternal sentiment to anguishing extremes in an intriguing and intensely acted debut feature, but the ending is missing.

Banger

by Stephen Dalton | Jul 6, 2022 | Featured, Festivals, Karlovy Vary, Karlovy Vary 2022

Drugs, rap music and reckless hunger for fame prove to be a potent cocktail in Czech writer-director Adam Sedlák’s enjoyably cartoonish comedy thriller ‘Banger’.

Catcave Hysteria

by Ben Nicholson | Jul 6, 2022 | Festivals, Karlovy Vary, Verdict Shorts

The women’s toilet in a nightclub becomes the site of miniature disasters and minor catastrophes in Angelika Abramovitch’s multi-stranded and surprisingly affecting short.

Fools

by Ben Nicholson | Jul 6, 2022 | Festivals, Karlovy Vary, Karlovy Vary 2022

Tomasz Wasilewski’s oblique new drama is a slowly unwinding puzzle in which a couple’s life is thrown into disarray when one of them brings her ill son to live with them.

Silence 6-9

by Stephen Dalton | Jul 6, 2022 | Featured, Festivals, Karlovy Vary, Karlovy Vary 2022

Actor-director Christos Passalis draws on his Greek Weird Wave roots for ‘Silence 6-9’. a cryptic but mostly impressive debut feature.

Ramona

by Patricia Boero | Jul 5, 2022 | Festivals, Karlovy Vary, Karlovy Vary 2022

A layered, mellow rom-com follows an aspiring, insecure actress torn between two love interests and careers in modern-day Madrid.

America

by Ben Nicholson | Jul 5, 2022 | Featured, Festivals, Karlovy Vary

Ofir Raul Graizer’s sophomore feature is a novelistic exploration of duty and companionship that is as vibrant and colourful as it is humane.

Art Talent Show

by Deborah Young | Jul 5, 2022 | Festivals, Karlovy Vary, Karlovy Vary 2022

A wild documentary ride through the selection process at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, where the teaching staff brainstorms to test the hidden talent of young applicants, and future artists do their best to make the undefined grade.

Lynch/Oz

by Stephen Dalton | Jul 5, 2022 | Festivals, Karlovy Vary, Karlovy Vary 2022, Spotlight, Tribeca

Director Alexandre Philippe’s undisciplined but insightful documentary ‘Lynch/Oz’ explores the influence of ‘The Wizard of Oz’ on David Lynch’s surreal cinematic universe.

Strasbourg 1518

by Ben Nicholson | Jul 5, 2022 | Festivals, Karlovy Vary, Verdict Shorts

Jonathan Glazer’s lockdown short embraces the urge to dance, re-framing a 16th century madness into an infectious ode to perseverance in the pandemic era.

Borders of Love

by Ben Nicholson | Jul 4, 2022 | Festivals, Karlovy Vary, Karlovy Vary 2022, Spotlight

A couple decide to broaden their sexual horizons with increasingly complicated results in Tomasz Winski’s knotty and intimate examination of honesty within relationship dynamics.

A Room of My Own

by Stephen Dalton | Jul 4, 2022 | Featured, Festivals, Karlovy Vary, Karlovy Vary 2022

A young Georgian woman struggles to overcome stifling sexism and emotional trauma in director Ioseb “Soso” Bliadze’s worthy but muted chamber drama ‘A Room of My Own’.

The Uncle

by Ben Nicholson | Jul 4, 2022 | Festivals, Karlovy Vary, Karlovy Vary 2022

A family celebration in 1980s Yugoslavia turns out to be anything but in this unnerving chamber piece that peppers farcical notes into an otherwise stomach-churning thriller.

The Word

by Deborah Young | Jul 4, 2022 | Festivals, Karlovy Vary, Karlovy Vary 2022

A small-town notary and his unbending wife put honor and honesty first in an uplifting if under-dramatized story from the Czech Republic’s Communist past, directed by Beata Parkanova.

Pietà

by Ben Nicholson | Jul 3, 2022 | Festivals, Karlovy Vary, Karlovy Vary 2022

Baroque stylings and meticulous composition create a hermetically sealed world in Eduardo Casanova’s ornate tale of overbearing matriarchal control.

You Won’t Be Alone

by Deborah Young | Jul 3, 2022 | Featured, Festivals, International Oscars 2024, Karlovy Vary, Karlovy Vary 2022

Noomi Rapace is among the moving female cast of Goran Stolevski’s Macedonian folk tale about blood-sucking, shape-shifting witches who offer body horror at its scariest, yet it’s also full of poetry, with a lot to say about women and life on Earth.

Horseplay

by Stephen Dalton | Jul 3, 2022 | Festivals, Karlovy Vary, Karlovy Vary 2022, Spotlight

Argentinean director Marco Berger turns his queer eye on the straight guys in ‘Horseplay’, a darkly funny critique of homophobic machismo.

The Night

by Ben Nicholson | Jul 3, 2022 | Festivals, Karlovy Vary, Verdict Shorts

Tsai Ming-liang is a master of the meditative short and he’s on exemplary form again with this nocturnal moment of rest in a restless Hong Kong.

And Then There Was Love…

by Ben Nicholson | Jul 2, 2022 | Festivals, Karlovy Vary, Karlovy Vary 2022

A woman seeks a fortune teller’s guidance about her ailing love life in this discursive but affecting portrait of generational trauma and self-love.

Vesper

by Deborah Young | Jul 2, 2022 | Festivals, Karlovy Vary, Karlovy Vary 2022, Spotlight

Engrossing and full of credible Euro SFX, the Lithuanian-French sci fi fantasy featuring Raffiella Chapman as a 13-year-old, self-taught scientist looking for a way out of a socially and environmentally sick world, seems targeted at imaginative YA audiences.

Awards Corner

Karlovy Vary

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