The masks were off and the parties were on at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (July 1-9) in a 56th edition brimming with street music, audiences hungry for edgy new movies and civilian crowds gaily mixing with festival-goers in what felt like the first real post-Covid film festival.
Of course, it helped that the Czech Republic has a phenomenally low rate of daily infections and that it was a holiday period attracting tourists. Underlining the atmosphere of an all-week outdoor party event, multiple pop-up stages and concerts lined the riverside, blasting music throughout the day, and new party locations materialized, like the rooftop the Thermal Hotel where the festival is headquartered. At least one screening was interrupted by the smell of barbecue that had seeped into the air ducts from the roof, but no one seemed to mind too much. And symbolizing the festival’s splashy post-Covid comeback was the glam reopening of the revamped, rebranded outdoor pool and treatment center overlooking the Thermal, a KV festival landmark that had been derelict for a few years.
The festival itself has undergone some major revamping this year under Karel Och’s direction, most importantly the controversial decision to drop both the documentary competition and the historic East of the West competition, established in the 1990s to aid former Eastern bloc filmmakers to emerge from political and psychological isolation – a mission now accomplished, says Och. Having dropped geographical limitations, from now on Karlovy Vary will program these films in the global context of its main Crystal Globe competition, or in a new competition section called Proxima designed for more challenging films and experimental fare. Debate raged over whether KV was weakened by losing its regional advantage over East and Central Europe, a focus shared by the upcoming August Sarajevo festival, which probably stands to gain some titles in the search for fresh talent from the region. Then again, there were Polish, Latvian, Czech, Bulgarian, Serbian and Georgian films scattered across the various KVIFF programs, so arguably it’s more a shift of focus than a cataclysmic change. And the festival’s industry platform, Eastern Promises, has confirmed its focus on projects from Central and Eastern Europe, the Balkans and former Soviet Union countries, as well as the Middle East and North Africa.
Not surprisingly, Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine kept Russian films to a historic minimum – there was just Captain Volkonogov Escaped tucked away in the Horizons sidebar – while Ukrainian films flourished, including recent festival hits like Klondike, Butterfly Vision, Reflection, Mariupolis 2 and Pamfir. Mirroring the lack of Russian films in the program was the notable absence of the usual large Russian tourist crowds. Even billboard advertisements in Cyrillic seemed to have disappeared and the local branch of the recently sanctioned, Russian state-owned bank Sberbank stood empty with sign saying, “closed for security reasons”.
Nearly all the films in both competitions were world (or international) premieres, an appreciable effort on the part of the programming team, and the Crystal Globe selection was of a uniformly high level, which is a rare achievement indeed considering the duds seen at major festivals. The top Crystal Globe award went to the Iranian film Summer of Love by Canadian-based director Sadaf Foroughi, describing the rebellion of a middle-class teenage boy against various authority figures. But the unspoken subtext leading to an ambiguous ending (a standard problem in edgy Iranian films because of state censorship) is the taboo of homosexuality that is suggested, not seen.
Of a very different flavor is the Special Jury Prize to Spanish director Jonás Trueba and his elegantly executed chamber piece You Have to Come and See It, which blends literature and philosophy, nature and art, bookish ideas and melancholy reality in the Rohmer-esque meetings between a city couple and a country couple. It was one of the best-liked films in the main competition, despite its diminutive one-hour running time.
The Best Director award went to Beata Parkanová for Word, a Czech drama coproduced by the Slovak Republic and Poland in which the quiet heroism and civic responsibility of a mismatched husband and wife is extolled in a story pitting a family against the state. Leading actor Martin Finger also won the Best Actor kudos for his performance in the same film as the husband, a small town notary public whose iron-clad moral values allow him to stand up and refuse to become a member of the Communist Party, whatever the consequences.
Sharing the Crystal Globe for best actress are Tamar “Taki” Mumladze and Mariam Khundadze, co-stars of Georgian director Ioseb “Soso” Bliadze’s quietly furious, feminist-slanted chamber drama A Room of My Own. These young women play mismatched house-mates in Tbilisi, each fighting against the sexist expectations of a deeply conservative society in different ways. As co-writer as well as co-star, Mumladze is doubly impressive here, her face a magnetic force on screen as she seethes with barely contained rage.
Worth a special mention here is the KVIFF audience award winner PSH Neverending Story, a highly entertaining portrait of PSH, a kind of Czech version of the Beastie Boys. This amusingly shambolic Prague rap trio have had a 20-year career full of highs and lows, booze and drugs, break-ups and breakdowns. Director Štepán Vodrážka’s sardonic documentary captures the group’s resilient attitude and winning humour, even as they play to pitifully small audiences in middle age. This emphatically local story was greeted with huge laughs and packed houses in Karlovy Vary.
In the Proxima competition, the Grand Prix went to Art Talent Show, a delightfully unexpected Czech documentary whose subject – the selection process for artistic young applicants eager to enter the Academia of Fine Arts in Prague – is very much in the spirit of the new competition. The role of art in a rapidly changing world and the judging of artistic talent get frank and lively treatment by directors Adela Komrzy and Tomas Bojar.
Other Proxima nods were the Special Jury Prize to Eduardo Casanova’s Pietà, a baroque character study that explores a stifling mother-son relationship through fastidious compositions, pastel hues, and knowingly arch melodrama, and a Special Jury Mention to Uncle directed by David Kapac and Andrija Mardesic. In a Groundhog Day-like, repeating Christmas in 1980s Yugoslavia, the film sprinkles dark humour into an otherwise unsettling thriller about control and nostalgia.
The real question will be whether Proxima will stand the test of time. The general consensus was that the fledgling section is still finding its feet, with some well-reviewed titles like Art Talent Show, the Argentine Horseplay, the Canadian In Broad Daylight, and the Polish-Romanian-German Fool pointing the way to what the section could do at its best and where it should aim in the future.
But Karlovy Vary is not just about the films; its glamorous awards ceremonies honored four major actors with Crystal Globes for their artistic work. The well-chosen recipients were Liev Schreiber, Benicio Del Toro, Geoffrey Rush and Boleslav Polivka.
