Karlovy Vary International Film Festival
The 58th edition of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (KVIFF) kicked off in the Czech Republic with the screening of the movie "The Dead Don't Hurt" written and directed by Viggo Mortensen and start by Solly McLeod. This year’s KVIFF began uncommonly with a retrospective, specifically a trip back in time to the year 1994, when the festival seemed to be doomed as the Ministry of Culture considered its cancellation. Fortunately, the festival foundation and its president Jiří Bartoška came on scene. A photography and video montage recalled the thirty years when the festival flourished under Bartoška’s direction. Mansour Jahani, an independent and international cinema journalist that covered the event informed that the KVIFF President took this opportunity to express his thanks: “Without our partners, the festival would not exist today. They believed in us when we came up with the idea of saving the festival, and that was a crucial support. Later, all the partners stayed with us during the Covid-19 pandemics”.
AWARDS' WINNERS
Viggo Mortensen received the Festival President’s Award. “It is a great honour for me to receive an award at the Karlovy Vary Festival. This is a great celebration of film” he continued. Mortensen also thanked the festival for choosing 'The Dead Don't Hurt', the second film he directed, as the opening film. “We are very happy to show you our story,” he said. Accompanying him in the film delegation was the young actor Solly McLeod.
At the closing ceremony of this year’s 58th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, the President’s Award for Outstanding Contribution to Czech Cinema will be presented to actor Ivan Trojan, one of the most frequently cast Czech actors in film, television, and theater of the past quarter century.
Actor, director, producer, and multiple European Film Award-winner Daniel Brühl is a guest of this year’s Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, where he will also receive the KVIFF President’s Award. On this occasion, Daniel Brühl will present his directorial debut "Next Door."
British actor Clive Owen, recipient of a Golden Globe, a BAFTA award, and a nomination for an Oscar, will be a special guest of this year’s festival. At the closing ceremony of the 58th KVIFF, Owen will be presented the KVIFF President’s Award. On this occasion, the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival will show the award-winning "Closer", which was released twenty years ago.
FILMS SCREENED
The movie "My Favourite Cake" directed by Behtash Sanaeeha and Maryam Moghadam, produced by Iran, France, Sweden and Germany; was screened in June and it will be screened July 3 and 6, 2024 in the non-competition Horizons section. Also the movie "In the Land of Brothers" directed by Alireza Ghasemi and Raha Amirfazli, produced by Iran, France and the Netherlands, will be screened in Europe for the first time on the 2nd, 4th and 6th. July 2024 in the non-competitive Special Screenings category.
FRANZ KAFKA AND CINEMA
In the unique retrospective “The Wish to Be a Red Indian: Kafka and Cinema,” the festival will present cinematic adaptations of works by influential and perhaps most mysterious figure of 20th-century literature. “Kafka is one of those authors whose oeuvre has inspired filmmakers for decades,” says KVIFF’s artistic director Karel Och, who collaborated on the retrospective with the festival’s foreign consultant Lorenzo Esposito. Continuing, Och adds: “It’s as if he were slyly challenging us to try to capture, as originally and intensely as possible, the elusive nature of his writings, his stories, the realities he has crafted, and the feelings of apprehension he elicits, but also the comic situations he has created.”
In addition, the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival to honor Francine Maisler, one of the world’s most respected casting directors
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