Karlovy Vary Film Festival unveils line-up
The Karlovy Vary Film Festival has unveiled its line-up for 2014, with seven world premieres and five international premieres included in addition to two Czech films and, for the first time ever, an animated movie.
“This year’s selection of competing films offers an exciting mixture of outstanding films whose completion has been eagerly anticipated. Many of the filmmakers, who explore less frequently trodden paths of cinematic expression, come from the countries of the former Eastern Bloc, which the KVIFF has long focused on,” said the festival’s artistic director Karel Och.
In the main festival section, renowned Georgian filmmaker George Ovashvili (The Other Bank) will introduce his long-anticipated film Corn Island, an unusual psychological drama that uses captivating imagery and visuals to present a highly topical subject – the intense relationship between man and nature.
The festival will also see leading Russian director Angelina Nikonova (Twilight Portrait) will premiere her bitter comedy Welkome Home, set among the immigrant community in contemporary New York.
Hungarian director György Pálfi, one of Europe’s most original filmmakers today, comes to Karlovy Vary with Free Fall, a sad and grotesque look at contemporary society. Through seven stories, Pálfi presents an alarming report on the state of humanity using his typical provocativeness and boundless imagination.
The intimate drama with irresistible melodramatic moments I’m Yours was filmed by Belgian director David Lambert, whose previous film Beyond the Walls was shown two
years ago at the Critics’ Week in Cannes. I’m Yours depicts the difficult road to emotional fulfillment through the story of an Argentine restless young man’s unlikely relationship with an aging Belgian baker.
Miroslav Krobot, theater artist and the only Czech actor to have appeared in films presented in Cannes, Berlin and Venice, will introduce his eagerly anticipated directorial debut Nowhere in Moravia. In this laconic rural drama with elements of dark comedy, Krobot channels Kaurismäki and the Mrštík brothers, with invaluable help from some of the Czech Republic’s best actors, led by Tatiana Vilhelmová, Ivan Trojan and Jaroslav Plesl.
The first animated film to be shown in competition at the Karlovy Vary IFF is the New York based Latvian filmmaker Signe Baumane’s Rocks in My Pockets. This “funny film about depression” describes, with remarkable courage and humor, the mental illness that afflicted her family for decades. The film also offers a captivating look at the history of Latvia during the first half of the 20th century.
The third woman to be represented in the main competition is Czech screenwriter and director Andrea Sedláčková with her film Fair Play. This intimate drama about trying to preserve human dignity in the face of state-organized doping during the totalitarian 1980s focuses on talented young athlete Anna (Judit Bárdos) and her mother (Anna Geislerová).
In the melancholic drama Low Down, director Jeff Preiss presents the bizarrely captivating and carefree bohemian scene of 1970s Los Angeles, as well as the talent and self-destructive heroin-addiction of famed jazz pianist Joe Albany (John Hawkes), seen through the eyes of his daughter Amy-Jo (Elle Fanning).
This year’s strong representation of countries east of the Czech Republic also features renowned Kazakh filmmaker Nariman Turebayev with Adventure, a loose adaptation of Dostoyevsky’s White Nights. The contemporary tale of lonely Marat’s fascination for the complex Mariyam was shot on the streets of Almaty, while its melancholic ambience is enhanced by subtle artistic and acoustic details.
In his subtly humorous new film Paris of the North, talented Icelandic filmmaker Hafsteinn Gunnar Sigurdsson (Either Way) is evoking a melancholic mood without emphasizing the dramatic conflict. A teacher who has managed to overcome his problems with alcohol, his frivolous rocker father, and the other inhabitants of an out-of-the-way village think about nothing less than what to do with their lives.
In his second film, the magical and oppressive La Tirisia, talented Mexican director Jorge Pérez Solano presents the story of Cheba and Angeles Miguel, two women who are pregnant by the same man. They live in a small isolated village, and their attempts at leading a modest but dignified life are constantly attacked by a strange illness of the soul, “la tirisia”.
France’s Pascal Rabaté, winner of the Best Director Award at the 2011 KVIFF for Holidays by the Sea, returns to the festival’s competition section with the intriguingly stylized and ironic morality tale Patchwork Family, in which the hardened cynic Christian is punished for the swindles he perpetrated in a manner not unlike the medieval punishment referred to in the film’s original title (Tar and Feathers).
OFFICIAL SELECTION – COMPETITION
Adventure / Adventure / Dobrodružství
Director: Nariman Turebayev
Kazakhstan, France, 2014, 78 min, World premiere
Díra u Hanušovic / Nowhere in Moravia / Díra u Hanušovic
Director: Miroslav Krobot
Czech Republic, 2014, 100 min, World premiere
Du goudron et des plumes / Patchwork Family / Dehet a peří
Director: Pascal Rabaté
France, 2014, 92 min, World premiere
Fair Play / Fair Play / Fair Play
Director: Andrea Sedláčková
Czech Republic, Slovak Republic, Germany, 2014, 100 min, International premiere
Je suis à toi / I’m Yours / Jsem tvůj
Director: David Lambert
Belgium, 2014, 101 min, World premiere
Low Down / Low Down / Až na dno
Director: Jeff Preiss
USA, 2014, 120 min, International premiere
Paris of the North / Paris of the North / Paříž Severu
Director: Hafsteinn Gunnar Sigurðsson
Iceland, 2014, 95 min, World premiere
Rocks in My Pockets / Rocks in My Pockets / Šutry v kapsách
Director: Signe Baumane
USA, Latvia, 2014, 88 min, World premiere
Simindis kundzuli / Corn Island / Kukuřičný ostrov
Director: George Ovashvili
Georgia, Germany, France, Czech Republic, Kazakhstan, 2014, 100 min, World premiere
Szabadesés / Free Fall / Volný pád
Director: György Pálfi
Hungary, France, South Korea, 2014, 89 min, International premiere
La tirisia / Perpetual Sadness / Smutek bez konce
Director: Jorge Pérez Solano
Mexico, 2014, 110 min, International premiere
Welkome Home / Welkome Home / Welkome Home
Director: Angelina Nikonova
Russia, 2014, 116 min, International premiere
EAST OF THE WEST – COMPETITION
Axınla Aşağı / Down the River / Po řece
Director: Asif Rustamov
Azerbaijan, 2014, 90 min, World premiere
Bota / Bota / Bota
Director: Iris Elezi, Thomas Logoreci
Albania, Italy, 2014, 100 min, World premiere
Drevo / The Tree / Strom
Director: Sonja Prosenc
Slovenia, 2014, 90 min, World premiere
Kebab & Horoscope / Kebab & Horoscope / Kebab a horoskop
Director: Grzegorz Jaroszuk
Poland, 2014, 69 min, World premiere
Kirsitubakas / Cherry Tobacco / Třešňový tabák
Director: Andres Maimik, Katrin Maimik
Estonia, 2014, 93 min, World premiere
Klass korrekcii / Corrections Class / Nápravná třída
Director: Ivan Tverdovsky
Russia, Germany, 2014, 98 min, International premiere
Norviyia / Norway / Norsko
Director: Yannis Veslemes
Greece, 2014, 77 min, World premiere
Rozkoš / Delight / Rozkoš
Director: Jitka Rudolfová
Czech Republic, 2013, 110 min, International premiere
Spomenik Majklu Džeksonu / Monument to Michael Jackson / Pomník Michaelu
Jacksonovi
Director: Darko Lungulov
Serbia, Germany, Macedonia, Croatia, 2014, 95 min, International premiere
Utóélet / Afterlife / Další život mého otce
Director: Virág Zomborácz
Hungary, 2014, 90 min, World premiere
VAN valami furcsa és megmagyarázhatatlan / For Some Inexplicable Reason / Jsou věci divné a nevysvětlitelné
Director: Gábor Reisz
Hungary, 2014, 89 min, World premiere
Varvari / Barbarians / Barbaři
Director: Ivan Ikić
Serbia, Montenegro, Slovenia, 2014, 87 min, World premiere
