56th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival

07/01/2022

Festival Reviews

Drive My Car

by Deborah Young | Jan 13, 2022 | Antalya, Buenos Aires, Busan, Cannes, Festivals, Karlovy Vary, Mar del Plat, Oscar shortlist, Rotterdam, San Sebastian, Tallinn, Thessaloniki, Toronto

Winner of the Academy Award for best international feature, Japanese director Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s ‘Drive My Car’ is the story of how love survives death in a long, measured, ultimately mesmerizing examination of the human soul.

The Exam

by Deborah Young | Dec 25, 2021 | Featured, Festivals, International Oscars 2024, Karlovy Vary, Red Sea

Cheating on a high school exam for a good cause gives top Iraqi Kurdish writer and director Shawkat Amin Korki (‘Memories on Stone’) a fertile moral field to examine the traps surrounding female empowerment.

Sanremo

by Boyd van Hoeij | Oct 24, 2021 | Festivals, Karlovy Vary

You can only fall in love with someone for the first time once… unless you are in the same position as one of the protagonists of Sanremo, Slovenia’s Oscar hopeful in the International Feature Film category. In this whisper of a film, an elderly man and woman living...

Hive

by Boyd van Hoeij | Oct 22, 2021 | Karlovy Vary, Oscar shortlist, Sundance, Warsaw, Zurich

Blerta Basholli’s debut feature is a modest but strongly acted human drama that puts Kosovo on the international Oscar shortlist.

Mariner of the Mountains

by Boyd van Hoeij | Oct 9, 2021 | Busan, Cannes, Karlovy Vary, Spotlight

A beautifully textured travel diary disguised as a highly personal quest — or is it the other way around? Either way, Mariner of the Mountains (Marinheiro das Montanhas) from director Karim Aïnouz — whose swoony feminist melodrama The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão...

Otar’s Death

by Stephen Dalton | Sep 10, 2021 | Featured, Festivals, Karlovy Vary

Partly inspired by real events, Otar’s Death is a fractious Georgian family drama with breathless thriller elements and a deep streak of black comedy.

Wild Roots

by Stephen Dalton | Sep 2, 2021 | Festivals, Karlovy Vary

Young Hungarian writer-director Hajni Kis delivers a highly assured debut feature with non-professional actors in the lead roles.

Bird Atlas

by Stephen Dalton | Sep 1, 2021 | Festivals, Karlovy Vary

Olmo Omerzu’s Czech boardroom farce is an absurdist comic parable about lives ruined and families divided by too much focus on money.

As Far as I Can Walk

by Stephen Dalton | Aug 31, 2021 | Featured, Karlovy Vary

The big prize-winner at Karlovy Vary film festival, As Far as I Can Walk is a modern migrant story with historic literary echoes.

Ali & Ava

by Stephen Dalton | Aug 31, 2021 | Karlovy Vary

Clio Barnard’s slightest and most conventional film to date, but also her most optimistic.

The Staffroom

by Boyd van Hoeij | Aug 31, 2021 | Karlovy Vary

A newly appointed school counselor in Croatia tries to keep her head above water in the shark tank that is The Staff Room (Zbornica), an auspicious if somewhat meandering feature debut from filmmaker Sonja Tarokic. Less a character study than the portrait of a...

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.

Awards Corner

Karlovy Vary

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