The 57th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival opened with a blast of international glamour as Alicia Vikander and Russell Crowe swept into town to receive honorary Crystal Globe awards for their screen careers so far. KVIFF prides itself on its self-effacing humour and lack of pomposity, in stark contrast to bigger and more glitzy Euro-festivals. That said, Crowe perhaps pushed the joke too far in his speech by confessing he was unaware the festival even existed until recently, adding that his main motive for attending was to play with his hobby band, Indoor Garden Party. Later, when they did play, the joke was on all of us.

Serious-minded social dramas dominated the main competition prizes. The big winner, taking home the top Crystal Globe statue (plus a handsome $25,000 paycheck) was Stephan Komandarev’s tragicomic Bulgarian thriller Blaga’s Lessons, about a struggling pensioner who fights back against criminal scammers and a rotten, rigged financial system. Eli Skorcheva also won the festival’s Best Actress award for her flinty performance as the film’s eponymous 70-year-old bad-ass heroine.

Meanwhile, the Special Jury Prize (worth $15,000) went to German-Iranian director Behrooz Karamizade’s elegantly crafted Empty Nets, about the romantic and financial friction between a socially mismatched couple, with a subtext of sly political critique against the current regime in Tehran. Another Iranian based in Europe, Babak Jalali, also picked up the Best Director prize for his lyrical immigrant drama Fremont, building on a very rich Iranian presence at Karlovy Vary this year, from Jafar Panahi’s latest meta-movie No Bears to more experimental low-budget fare.

In the festival’s secondary Proxima competition, the two main prizes went to Yoo Ji-young’s sombre, quietly angry abortion drama Birth and the bittersweet childhood fable Guras by Indian director Surav Rai. Both earned their awards, but some KV regulars question the festival’s rebranding of its former East of the West section, which previously showcased cinema from former Eastern Bloc nations, as the more internationally focused Proxima. Critics argue Karlovy Vary risks losing its distinctive voice by thinking globally rather than regionally.

All the same, there were still plenty of strong films from Eastern Europe in this year’s KVIFF program, most of them made by female directors. Two powerful Film Verdict favourites were Polish director Olga Chajdas’ emotionally raw punk-singer bio-drama Imago (which also won a main FIPRESCI jury prize) and Georgian director Tinatin Kajrishvili’s exquisitely beautiful, darkly satirical monochrome parable Citizen Saint. Look out for both at a festival near you soon.

Just like last year, the war in Ukraine hung over Karlovy Vary again like a dark cloud, both on screen and off. Once a major Russian tourist magnet and reliably sympathetic showcase for Russian cinema, particularly during Soviet times, the Czech spa town now takes a bold zero-tolerance stance against Putin’s gangster regime. As festival director Karel Och explained, “we would not accept any Russian films supported by the state after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.”

Speaking to The Film Verdict, Czech-based Russian actor Ivan Shvedoff endorsed this strict boycott of his former homeland. “It is not the time for Russian film and its representatives to participate in international cultural forums,” he said. “You can’t put people being bombed and people bombing their country in the same room and give them equal time to express their position.”

Indeed, the Ukraine conflict figured in several stand-out films in KVIFF, including the European premiere of Scream of My Blood: A Gogol Bordello Story. This lively documentary biopic about Kyiv-born rocker Eugene Hütz and his “gypsy punk” band includes footage of the swashbuckling singer playing for soldiers and refugees in his war-torn homeland. Hütz flew into Karlovy Vary to promote the film with a brief, impromptu live set in Karlovy Vary’s cavernous Grand Hall. The Ukraine invasion, he confidently told reporters, is only going to end one way, with total Russian defeat: “anyone who ever thought Russia would somehow accomplish the delusion of grandeur they set out for has clearly never met one single Ukrainian.” This was a ragged but life-affirming performance, one of many highlights of a noisy, crowded, bleary-eyed festival that mostly hit all the right notes.

 GRAND PRIX – CRYSTAL GLOBE
Blaga’s Lessons / Urotcite na Blaga
Directed by: Stephan Komandarev
Bulgaria, Germany, 2023 

SPECIAL JURY PRIZE
Empty Nets / Toorhaye khali
Directed by: Behrooz Karamizade
Germany, Iran, 2023

BEST DIRECTOR AWARD
Babak Jalali for the film Fremont
USA, 2023

BEST ACTRESS
Eli Skorcheva for Blaga’s Lessons / Urotcite na Blaga
Bulgaria, Germany, 2023 

BEST ACTOR AWARD
Herbert Nordrum for The Hypnosis / Hypnosen
Sweden, Norway, France, 2023

SPECIAL JURY MENTION
Dancing on the Edge of a Volcano
Directed by: Cyril Aris
Germany, Lebanon, 2023 

PRÁVO AUDIENCE AWARD
The Edge of the Blade / Une affaire d’honneur
Directed by: Vincent Perez
France, 2023

PROXIMA COMPETITION

PROXIMA GRAND PRIX
Birth
Directed by: Yoo Ji-young
South Korea, 2022   

PROXIMA SPECIAL JURY PRIZE
Guras
Directed by: Saurav Rai
India, Nepal, 2023 

SPECIAL JURY MENTION
Brutal Heat / Brutální vedro
Directed by: Albert Hospodárský
Czech Republic, Slovak Republic, 2023

OTHER AWARDS

GRAND PRIZE OF THE ECUMENICAL JURY
Blaga’s Lessons / Urotcite na Blaga
Directed by: Stephan Komandarev
Bulgaria, Germany, 2023

COMMENDATION OF THE ECUMENICAL JURY
Citizen Saint / Mokalake Tsmindani
Directed by: Tinatin Kajrishvili
Georgia, France, Bulgaria, 2023

EUROPA CINEMAS LABEL AWARD
The Hypnosis / Hypnosen
Directed by: Ernst De Geer
Sweden, Norway, France, 2023

FIPRESCI AWARD in the Crystal Globe Competition
The Hypnosis / Hypnosen
Directed by: Ernst De Geer
Sweden, Norway, France, 2023

FIPRESCI AWARD in the Proxima Competition
Imago
Directed by: Olga Chajdas
Poland, Netherlands, Czech Republic, 2023

As in Périot’s previous films, notably Our Defeats (2019), this formally precise documentary is methodically structured as a dialogue between past and present, archive footage and recent interview material. Seeing these vintage clips of bombed-out apartment blocks and defiant Bosnian citizens today, comparisons with Russia’s current war crimes in Ukraine are hard to avoid, though the director does not overplay these parallels. Facing Darkness has a lot to say about both the ethics and aesthetics of filming war: not exactly a fun topic but this is an instructive and fresh take on grimly familiar events, made with intelligence and integrity. Further festival interest is assured, with a potential audience spanning academics to amateur historians to casual documentary fans.

Périot divides Facing Darkness into two sections. The first is a compilation of archive video footage shot during the siege by student film-makers Nedim Alikadic, Smail Kapetanovic, Dino Mustafic, Nebojša Šeric-Shoba and Srdan Vuletic. All were in their early twenties at the time. The look of these clips is shaky and scratchy while the stylistic choices range from serious citizen journalism, including fleeting but graphic footage of massacres and mangled bodies, to more left-field fare like home movies of boozy parties in nuclear bunkers and even attempts at absurdist comedy. Périot presents this material without commentary or context, a raw time capsule from the bloody final decade of the 20th century.

In its longer second half, Facing Darkness tracks down the former student film-makers who shot these clips, three decades later. While some confess they took up video journalism to avoid direct military action, others ended up willingly fighting on the frontline. Several went on become professional directors. A few still appear deeply traumatised.

Patient and precise, Périot interrogates their memories of the siege, and their motives for filming it. “Sometimes a camera is a better weapon then a gun,” Mustafic recalls. Another points out that public parks were once used as makeshift graveyards for children killed in Serbian attacks. A new generation of children now play there, oblivious to these ghoulish echoes. “How could people do that to each other?” Mustafic ponders. “I’ve been trying to answer that question for 30 years.”

Périot is particularly interested in the decision points where survival mode ends and creative film-making choices begin. With calm rigour, he explores how victorious battle sequences were partially faked, adding extra staged footage for propaganda purposes. As corpses in the streets of Sarajevo became a commonplace sigh, one director recalls stumbling upon mangled bodies from a shelling attack, calmly and professionally filming them, only to erase the footage in disgust afterwards. A sunny sequence featuring smiling young soldiers is achingly poignant, as many would die on the frontline just days later.

The film’s most prickly contemporary interview takes place close to Sarajevo airport, where hundreds of citizens were killed by snipers as they attempted to flee the siege for safer ground. Meanwhile, as Šeric-Shoba complains bitterly, UN peacekeepers obstructed them and Western European leaders watched nonchalantly from afar, blissfully unaware that “fascism would eventually come to their doorstep, 30 years later.”

At this point, implicit parallels with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine become explicit. The Balkan wars were one of the earliest aftershocks of the Soviet empire’s collapse, which still reverberates today. The tragic events captured on scratchy video in Facing Darkness played out half a lifetime ago, but they are also happening again right now in another corner of Europe, this time with a million cameras watching.

Director, sceenwriter, editing: Jean-Gabriel Périot
Cinematography: Amine Berrada, Amel Dikoli, Denis Gravouil, Augustin Losserand
Sound: Xavier Thibault, Laure Arto
Producer: Cécile Lestrade
Production company: Alter Ego Production (France)
Sales: The Party Film Sales, Paris
Venue: Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (Special Screenings)
In Bosnian
109 minutes

There are decades of unresolved tensions simmering away between mother and daughter in Keeping Mum, which make this Karlovy Vary world premiere almost uncomfortably voyeuristic and a little too self-indulgent in places. All the same, a compelling mix of real-life soap-opera melodrama, universally relatable emotions and eye-catching collage visuals should help secure further festival bookings and potential wider audience interest.

Brisavoine began work on Keeping Mum after becoming a mother herself, claiming the experience churned up decades of buried resentment towards the woman who gave birth to her but rejected her soon afterwards. The eccentric but kindly grandmother seen on screen here, the director warns us, is far from the whole picture. Meaud was a punky bohemian party animal in her youth, and remains a charismatic presence on screen today, though her thin-skinned narcissism and short fuse are abundantly evident too. As a young divorcee, she abadoned her first two children, Brisavoine and her brother Florian, only to raise three more in her next marriage. The director began this exploratory film with vague intentions, but it became a truth and justice campaign. She is seeking some kind of reckoning, a public admission of guilt, an apology for the pain that she and her brother still carry around today.

Brisavoine assembles Keeping Mum in an agreeably freewheeling style, cross-cutting between past and present, recently shot footage and archive material, text messages, scratchy old home videos, Skype calls with Florian, and more, often using multi-screen montages. A strong recurring thread in this time-jumping pile-up of images is the director’s teenage diary entries, which are full of frank and poignant accounts of her mother’s cruel behaviour. As a witty framing device, Brisavoine repeatedly weaves in vintage clips from a TV science show about the cosmos, a metaphor for all the dark matter in her family’s bruising back story, an inner-space odyssey to understand the Big Bang moment that blew everything apart.

When it comes to challenging her hot-tempered mother over her past failings, Brisavoine is understandably wary. Even as the pair make warm conversation on camera, the director berates herself in a comically self-critical off-screen voice-over. “Enough of this bullshit and cowardice,” she fumes. Once she finally plucks up the courage to confront Meaud, her reaction is predictably explosive. “You pass me off as Queen Bitch who hurt her kids!” the mother rages, shutting down the interview. “I won’t go on camera! Get fucked, all of you!” There are pleasing echoes here of Maurice Pialat’s classic, brutal family psychodrama A Nos Amours (1983).

But for all Brisavoine’s pent-up rage and passive-aggressive tactics, Keeping Mum is not a sustained character assassination. She shows empathy towards her mother’s own challenges and struggles, from the crushing divorce which left her anorexic and suicidal to more recent, mundane, domestic problems. The dutiful daughter seems more like a parent in these scenes, while her mother plays the more childlike role. Without getting into spoilers, there is no real closure here, for protagonists or viewers alike. Instead, Brisavoine has to console herself with self-care, forgiveness and extensive New Age therapy, some of which she includes on screen. More temporary ceasefire than full peace agreement, this is a muddy conclusion to a messy film, not wholly satisfactory but still plausibly human. The primal wound remains. The resolution will not be televised.

Director, screenwriter: Émilie Brisavoine
Cinematography: Émilie Brisavoine, Tom Harari
Editing: Karen Benaïnous
Producer: Nicolas Anthomé
Music: Benoît Daniel
Production company: Bathysphere Productions (France)
World sales: Best Friend Forever
Venue: Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (Proxima Competition)
In French
80 minutes

On 4 August 2020, an explosion rocked the city of Beirut. A vast cache of ammonium nitrate being stored at the port of the Lebanese capital caught fire and erupted in devastating fashion, killing hundreds, injuring thousands, and causing billions of dollars of damage. It was a catastrophe that literally shook the country and was heard hundreds of miles away. In the aftermath of such a cataclysm, the team behind the forthcoming film shoot of Mounia Akl’s Costa Brava, Lebanon had a host of difficult decisions to make and hurdles to overcome. Aris’ film transforms the typically ancillary behind-the-scenes doc into a vital and moving depiction of collective endeavour and a reflection on the artistic process.

Although Akl’s film was not actually being shot in Beirut, but up in the mountains, the city becomes the focal point for much of Aris’ film as everyone involved in the proposed shoot ruminates on what it means to make art, and how possible it is to do so, in the wake of such a tragedy. Dancing on the Edge of the Volcano opens right in the midst of things, cutting from a mournful clip of a bombed-out Beirut in 1980 in Maroun Baghdadi’s Whispers straight to audio and video footage from directly after the explosion: “Everything is destroyed,” cries one voice. “Did anyone talk to Mom? She’s not picking up,” worries another. It’s a visceral opening that is only made more impactful by the following voiceover from news reports that speak of the corruption that led to the explosion.

Living in buildings that no longer have windows, and having a cinematographer who has lost the use of one eye in the explosion, it was obviously a difficult decision whether the production should proceed at all. Akl is adamant that stability in Lebanon is something semi-mythical and that they must hold onto their momentum, but she could hardly have been prepared for the mass protests, flash floods, financial crises, power outages and global pandemic that would come to plague them throughout the shoot and post-production. How can artists continue to create when they are constantly fighting against a tide, she wonders to her father in a candid moment in which futility creeps into her thoughts. “I believe that the accumulation of tragedies can give birth to something extraordinary,” he wisely intones.

At one point, the cinematographer, Joe Saade, explains in voiceover that the appeal of Beirut once lay in its chaotic nature, but that now that chaos had gone too far. Aris cuts immediately to a voiceover from Baghdadi’s Whispers, which romantically addresses the young people of Beirut who go to parties and try to live their lives, despite the persistent sounds of bombs. The film pointed cuts between the youth of today’s city and those of Baghdadi’s film, expressing with its montage a semblance of the cyclical rhythms of history and the recurring misfortunes of the Lebanese people.

However, all of these allusions to continued heartache and very immediate depictions of struggle are juxtaposed against the film shoot itself. The making of Costa Brava, Lebanon becomes almost like a soothing balm for all those involved, even though its dystopian setting hardly diverts attention from the ills of the world around it, the cast and crew seem to respond to a sense of warming embrace that their communal efforts afford.

Aris does well to capture a variety of intimate moments, from the first time some young actors rehearse timidly with Israeli lead actor Saleh Bakri (whose voyage to get to Beirut is a compelling side-story on its own), to people sharing meals and laughter amid the tumult. “I forgot all about the world around us, the pandemic, the crises, everything,” explains Bakri after they wrap. In often concentrating on the potential power of art via the effect it can have on its audience and society, these delicate asides remind us of the power it can have as an outlet for the creators. And all the while, Aris keeps Beirut in focus, specifically through Akl’s own relationship with the city, with recurring motions towards the resilience of the city and its people even after the accumulation of tragedies.

Director, screenplay: Cyril Aris
Producer: Myriam Sassine, Katharine Weser
Cinematography: Joe Saade
Editing: Nadia Ben Rachid, Cyril Aris
Music: Anthony Sahyoun
Sound: Victor Bresse
Production companies: Abbout Productions (Lebanon), Reynard Films (Germany)
Venue: Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (Crystal Globe)
In Arabic, English, French
87 minutes

The endpoint was clear, but everything else was spontaneous – something that is pointed out in the film when, on multiple occasions, the travelers are told they can’t just show up unannounced due to Covid regulations. And even the ending, or rather the part of it that didn’t make it into the film, went off the beaten track. “The film was not meant as a goodbye, it’s a hello”, says Imbach. “The idea was to do a second trip later on. And then came the news that he had died.” What remains is this tribute, which combines footage of the pilgrimage with various Godard clips – film snippets and interviews alike – as well as material from Imbach’s own back catalogue.

Perhaps most poignantly, we see a clip from his 2013 film Mary, Queen of Scots, which sort of parallels the journey from Zurich to Rolle in that, much like with Godard, we’re never quite sure if Queen Elizabeth I will ever appear in the movie. Imbach recognizes the connection, with an anecdote: “There’s a scene I did not put in the documentary, where I wonder if Godard will be more gracious to me than Elizabeth was to Mary, who ended up decapitated.”

Besides the divine implications in the title, which are also a running joke in the film itself, the walk to Rolle also served a more cinephile purpose. “This was my way of making him Swiss,” Imbach explains. “When I first started out as a filmmaker, it was not considered a good thing to bring up Godard, because the consensus was he was not making interesting films anymore. And even though he grew up in Switzerland and came back repeatedly, eventually settling down there for good, the Swiss filmmaking community didn’t think of him as one of us. Whereas when I saw Every Man For Himself in the early ‘80s, I realized there was a different way to make Swiss films, closer to home, without having to go far away.”

And how would Godard feel about the current cinematic landscape? “I learned early on you can’t think that way. If you start trying to think about what he would do, you’re doomed. As far as my filmmaking is concerned, I had to ‘kill’ Godard to find my own path.” And now, at long last, the two paths have converged.

Imago takes place in the Baltic shipbuilding city of Gdansk during the volatile late 1980s, with mass rallies on the streets, Solidarity challenging a sclerotic Soviet puppet regime, and Poland cautiously embracing free elections for the first time in over 40 years. But Ela (Gora) is too consumed by her own bipolar mood swings to take much interest in politics. A mentally fragile young woman from a large working-class family, Ela is a hot mess, bouncing between psychiatric wards, arty parties and rowdy rock concerts. One day, she spontaneously climbs onstage to perform with a local band, rivetting the audience with her banshee wails and stream-of-conscious poetry. A natural born diva with strong artistic impulses, she has found not just a cathartic creative outlet but also a welcoming alternative family.

Ela’s chain-smoking ice-queen charisma bring all the boys to the yard, including unwelcome sexual harassment from strangers on the street. Torn between two lovers, earnest Tomek (Mateusz Wieclawek) and glamorous bad-boy painter Stach (Michal Balicki), her life becomes a boho whirl of sex and drugs, rock shows and gallery openings, wild swimming and naked sunbathing. But her growing fame on the local music scene causes confusion at home, and tension with her mother (Boguslawa Schubert), especially when she falls pregnant. Facing a stark choice between a free-spirited artistic future, or marriage and motherhood, takes a heavy toll on Ela’s mental state.

Góra’s depiction of her loose-cannon mother is unvarnished, but nuanced and sympathetic. She clearly knows this milieu intimately, including some of the real-life characters and extended family members portrayed on screen. Born to a singer mother and painter father, Góra grew up around musicians and performance artists, including Thierry Mugler’s long-time partner Leon Dziemaszkiewicz, partying in graveyards and industrial warehouse spaces. Her relationship with Ela was fractious, leaving Poland in her teens to pursue her own creative career in London, New York and LA. But this film is ultimately a heartfelt love letter from daughter to mother, emotionally raw yet tender. The final scenes, featuring a baby version of Góra herself, have a bittersweet sense of closure.

Chajdas shoots Imago in stylishly grainy, grungy palette designed to invoke the vintage VHS look of 1980s music videos. The plotting is a little baggy and receptive in places, as Ela’s life becomes a rambling series of shows, parties and boozy meltdowns. Plus smoking. Endless, endless smoking. Late 1980s Poland looks like a giant ashtray at times. A little more narrative rigour and psychological depth would have been welcome here. Messy lives do not always require messy films. That said, Tomasz Naumiuk’s whirling, kinetic camerawork has a freewheeling rock’n’roll energy that suits the material.

Music is woven deep into the fabric of Imago, of course, and crucial to its dramatic authenticity. Recreating historical rock scenes is a tricky balancing act that film-makers often get wrong, but Chajdas and her team do a persuasive job of capturing the crackling, spontaneous, rowdy energy of live performance. The songs, mostly composed by Polish rocker Andrzej Smolik and performed by the cast, are impressively visceral, tinged with gothic melodrama and confrontational tension, invoking the post-punk aesthetic without succumbing to bloodless movie-world pastiche. A finely curated background soundtrack featuring real 1980s cult bands including the Residents, Einstürzende Neubauten and the impressively obscure London duo Rexy lend an extra layer of forensic period accuracy.

Director: Olga Chajdas
Cast: Lena Góra, Boguslawa Schubert, Michal Balicki, Wojciech Brzezinski, Mateusz Wieclawek, Waclaw Warchol, Lukasz Orbitowski, Justyna Wasilewska
Screenplay: Lena Góra, Olga Chajdas
Cinematography: Tomasz Naumiuk
Editing: Pavel Hrdlicka
Art director: Anna Anosowicz
Music: Smolik
Producers: Izabela Wójcik, Violetta Kami?ska, Dariusz Jab?o?ski
Production company: Apple Film Production (Poland)
Venue: Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (Proxima Competition)
In Polish
113 minutes

Kajrishvili’s two previous features, Brides (2014) and Horizon (2018), earned positive reviews and festival prizes. Both were essentially small-scale domestic dramas with a naturalistic tone, though the latter unfolded in a remote lakeside location with a dreamlike, off-the-map aura. That fable-like otherness is foregrounded much more in Citizen Saint, which takes place in a mountainous milieu that looks almost post-apocalyptic at times. Kajrishvili filmed around the city of Chiatura in western Georgia, whose stark landscape is a major visual asset. Shot in timeless monochrome, this purgatorial wasteland of rusting cable cars, pockmarked roads, crumbling bridges, lunar valleys and rugged rocky vistas has a bleakly elemental beauty. Some luminously lovely scenes were even shot deep underground, inside the mine.

A locally revered “saint” watches over this remote community from a hillside perch, a Christ-like figure on a giant wooden crucifix, believed to be petrified body of a former miner with supernatural powers. When town museum officals take the statue down for restoration, the residents become uneasy, especially the miners, who fear their guardian angel will no longer protect them during risky underground work.

After the statue mysteriously vanishes, and a mute stranger (George Babluani) arrives in town, many are quick to presume that the saint has returned to corporeal human form. The mystery man’s presence does indeed seem to have a magical effect on the townsfolk. The sick are healed, estranged couples reunited. In a dazzling, hallucinatory sequence shot inside the mine, Berdo (Levan Berikashvili) is reunited with his long-dead son.

But since the saint says nothing, he quickly becomes a blank screen on which everybody projects their secret desires and unspoken regrets. For Mari (Brides veteran Mari Kitia in compellingly flinty mode), the stranger reawakens thwarted romantic and sexual yearnings that only bring her narrow, blighted life into sharper relief. Instead of healing the community, the stranger ultimately taps into decades of hidden wounds and festering resentments.  A bitterly absurd finale hammers several rusty nails into the hollow promise of religion, a con trick that people willingly play on themselves in the absence of any genuine consoling faith.

Kajrishvili initially conceived Citizen Saint seven years ago as more of a satirical comic fable, which might have made it more marketable beyond elevated art-house circles. While some mordant humour remains, the finished film is now ostensibly a sombre allegory about the incurable human hunger to cling onto tiny flickers of hope in a callous, godless universe. Although the cultural references here are obviously Christian and Biblical, Kajrishvili insists she did not intend to make a specifically religious story, more a universal parable.

As a piece of drama, Citizen Saint is opaque and cryptic, leaving many loose ends unresolved. Even so, it is never boring, holding our attention with outlandish plot twists and strong performances. But its key strength is as an exquisite visual artwork, largely thanks to Krum Rodriguez’s gorgeous high-resolution monochrome cinematography, which makes every shot an Old Master tableaux of fine-grained detail and chiaroscuro shadow. The liturgigal drones and ghostly sirens of Tako Zhordania’s score deepen this sense of solemn, mystical beauty.

Director: Tinatin Kajrishvili
Cast: Levan Berikashvili, George Babluani, Mari Kitia, Gia Burjanadze
Screenplay: Tinatin Kajrishvili, Basa Janikashvili
Cinematography: Krum Rodriguez
Editing: David Apkhaidze
Art director: George Gordzamashvili
Producer: Lasha Khalvashi, Tinatin Kajrishvili
Music: Tako Zhordania
Production: Studio Artizm (Georgia), Gemini (Georgia)
Venue: Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (Crystal Globe Competition)
In Georgian
100 minutes

“This used to be a spa centre focused on rich clients, mostly from Russia,” said Josef Dlohoš, director of the Information Centre Karlovy Vary, a tourism centre. Hotels and treatment centres depended on them for business — especially as they did not scrimp on paying for a wide range of facilities. “As Russians, they needed to have everything, 150 per cent,” he said.

Now, Russian tourists are all but banned from Karlovy Vary. During the Covid pandemic, after Russia’s Sputnik vaccine was not recognised as valid proof of immunity, their presence declined sharply. And when Putin’s regime launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Czech government joined Finland, the Baltic states and Poland in restricting visas for Russians wanting to visit. Ukrainian refugees, on the other hand, have been welcomed.

“Russians would spend a huge amount of money here, and from this point of view it’s a pity, but from all other sides, and our history of 1968 [when troops led by the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia], it’s good for the future if Karlovy Vary will not be a Russian town,” said Mr. Dlohoš.

The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, the city’s most important cultural event, is now reckoning with its legacy of close links to the Soviet Union. It would alternate yearly with Moscow between 1959 and 1993, when it was the only A-list festival for socialist countries. Last year’s retitling of the East of the West competition to Proxima, with geographical origin no longer considered, is an effort to move with the times — and away from defining nations by their past grouping in a Bloc under the control of Russia.

The war in Ukraine was very present in this year’s programme, from Ukrainian director Roman Liubyi’s documentary Iron Butterflies (2023), about the 2014 shooting down of a passenger airliner over territory controlled by Russian separatist forces, to Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki’s Cannes hit Fallen Leaves (2023), a droll, Helsinki-set romance that has radio reports about the invasion as  ever-present background.

But there were no Russian films. Asked if this reflected an official stance, Karel Och, the festival’s artistic director, said: “As far as this year is concerned, we would not accept any Russian films supported by the state after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The handful of independently made films with Russian participation did not make it into the selection.”

Last year, there was an outcry from Ukrainian filmmakers in an open letter when Captain Volkonogov Escaped (2021), which had Russian Ministry of Culture backing, was screened, despite it being a co-production with Estonia and France that is critical of the Stalinist terror and authoritarianism.

Ivan Shvedoff, an actor who was born in Saint Petersburg but has been living in the Czech Republic for decades and is well-known for playing Russians in Western productions, including agitator Alexei Kardakov in hit German television series Babylon Berlin, was in attendance, and was outspoken when asked about the absence of Russian cinema and tourists from Karlovy Vary.

“It is not the time for Russian film and its representatives to participate in international cultural forums. You can’t put people being bombed and people bombing their country in the same room and give them equal time to express their position,” said Mr. Shvedoff.

“This so-called Eastern bloc was so Russocentric. Ukraine, Estonia and so on have always been made to go behind the big brother, so that these countries and their languages would not be considered as cultures, and it’s not fair,” he said.

“Once Russia would pay all contributions for rebuilding Ukraine, apologise and go through a denazification process, including its cultural forms and the media, then I would be interested in what Russian culture would be. But it will take another 20 or 30 years,” said Shvedoff, adding: “Karlovy Vary developed with Russian money — but money’s not everything.”

Hütz is the revved-up emotional engine of Scream of My Blood. He mostly comes across as a frank and passionate character, bursting with energy and humour, clearly sharing a warm bond with his ragtag army of band members. Punk godfather Iggy Pop also makes a brief cameo, as does cult record producer Steve Albini, famed for his work with Pixies and Nirvana. Backed by troubled media company Vice News, this fast-paced rockumentary premiered at Tribeca film festival last month, where it earned a special jury mention, and makes its international debut in Karlovy Vary this week. Although Hütz is only a cult-level rock star, his lusty party-punk music, boosted by that timely Ukraine angle, should help secure sales interest and further festival slots.

Pommer and Weinrib build a rich collage of personal photos, archive footage, recent interviews and live performance clips. They begin by rewinding to Hütz’s childhood in Soviet-era Kyiv. His father, a counter-culture hippie forever under suspicion for his illicit love of western pop music, is a genial background presence in the film. The rule under Russian occupation was “stay fucking bland”, Hütz recalls, a repressive attitude which only helped foster a vibrant Ukrainian punk subculture, repurposing banned folk music as dissident rebel rock.

The Chernobyl nuclear disaster played an unexpected role in Gogol Bordello’s genesis. To escape possible radiation poisoning, Hütz and family temporarily relocated from Kyiv to stay with relatives in the Carpathian mountain region of western Ukraine, where he first discovered his Romani musical heritage. On his return to Kyiv, a 1989 live show by US noise-rockers Sonic Youth also proved life-changing. Fusing these two disparate influences was an inspired decision that would later bear fruit in Gogol Bordello.

When Gorbachev began relaxing Soviet control on Ukraine, Hütz’s family eagerly applied to emigrate. After bouncing around Europe as rootless refugees, they finally landing in the US state of Vermont in 1992. After spending his teens at punk and hardcore shows, Hütz inevitably gravitated to New York City, where he formed an embryonic version of Gogol Bordello in 1999. Rare clips of the band’s explosive early live shows, a riotous fusion of Dadaist cabaret with rock performance, are highly entertaining. Scream of My Blood then moves into more conventional bio-doc mode, skipping through the decades as the band earn growing fame and add more members to their multicultural melting pot. “An orchestra of immigrants,” Hütz calls them.

Behind his engagingly open-hearted manner, Hütz actually gives very little away in Scream of My Blood. We learn nothing about his private life and relationships, for example, while a shaky period of burn-out and relocation to Brazil is only thinly explained. Perhaps inevitably, there is no mention of the lawsuit that former guitarist Oren Kaplan launched against the singer in 2013, accusing Hütz of stealing $500,000 from the band’s bank account.

Harder to explain is the omission of Hütz’s high-profile friendship with Madonna, who only appears fleetingly here in an archive awards show clip. The material girl performed live with Gogol Bordello in 2007, and even gave Hütz a co-starring role in her film directing debut, Filth and Wisdom (2008), both glaringly absent here. The singer’s other main acting credit, opposite Elijah Wood in Liev Schreiber’s Everything is Illuminated (2005), is similarly overlooked. Which is odd, as Schreiber is listed as co-producer on Scream of My Blood.

That said, for fans of Gogol Bordello’s supercharged mongrel-punk racket, there is a feast of spectacular concert footage here, spanning two decades and multiple contienets. For casually curious viewers, Scream of My Blood is a fast-moving, well-crafted primer on the band, light on background detail but generally compelling. The scenes of Hütz singing and dancing with refugees in Ukrainian bomb shelters, and dedicating boisterous concerts to his ancestral homeland’s indestructible warrior spirit, lend this film a powerful emotional kick.

Directors: Nate Pommer, Eric Weinrib
Cast: Eugene Hütz, Pamela Racine, Sergey Ryabtsev, Pedro Erazo, Elizabeth Sun, Iggy Pop
Cinematography: Nate Pommer
Editing: Nate Pommer, Chris Iversen, Paula Salhany
Music: Eugene Hütz, Gogol Bordello
Producers: Nate Pommer, Beverly Chase
Production companyt: VICE News (US)
Venue: Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (Special Screenings)
In English, Ukrainian
90 minutes

Being in Karlovy Vary is especially emotional since the festival also honored the film’s main
producer Christine Vachon, a true legend in the field who has worked with Todd Haynes,
John Cameron Mitchell, Mary Harron and Paul Schrader, among others. Song agrees with
that description: “She’s an amazing legend!” she exclaims joyfully. “It’s been a privilege and an
honor to work with her. I knew that as a first-time director I needed a strong producer to
provide guidance throughout the process, and Christine has decades of experience working in
independent film in New York City. So whenever I had a problem that seemed huge, she
would know exactly what to say to make it look tiny.”

Not that there were many problems on the set to begin with. Coming from a theater
background, Song was well versed in areas such as blocking and working with actors. She
elaborates: “The key thing was talking to everyone, making sure we were all on the same
page in terms of what each scene was about: the characters, or an object, or a location.” The
latter proved vital when scouting the perfect location to use as the apartment where the
female protagonist Nora lives with her husband Arthur. “I didn’t want it to look perfect,
because in real life the most romantic conversations take place in shitty bedrooms”, she says,
referring to a key scene in the movie. “So that was my goal, to find a place that was
believable.”

The notion of believability is also why Arthur’s role is more rounded than a generic third wheel character , who becomes a crowd when his wife reconnects with a
childhood friend/old flame. Song based the script on personal experiences, and the opening
scene, in which the three main characters are at a bar and we hear other people trying to figure
out who they are to each other, is a fairly exact recreation of real events. She explains it like this:
“We’ve seen plenty of bad marriages on screen. I wanted to show a good marriage, where the
good part is not that it’s a perfect relationship, because there’s always a part of your partner
that you will never be able to access, but they’re there for each other.”

Past Lives won three accolades at the Hollywood Critics Midseason Awards for Best Indie Film, Best Screenplay and Best Actress (for Greta Lee.)

Former literature teacher Blaga (Eli Skorcheva) is already unmoored by grief over the recent death of her husband, a policeman, when she is duped by Romanian phone scammers and their local mules out of her savings. Posing as law enforcement and insisting she’s in danger in a shock avalanche of phone calls, the practiced criminals convince her to throw her valuables off the balcony. She had earmarked part of the money to pay for a cemetery plot before the forty days are up that, according to religious belief, her spouse’s soul stays on Earth (in a dark joke, we’re initially cued to think she’s shopping for real estate for herself — not a great stretch, in a nation of condemned citizens walking.) With no collateral for a bank loan, and a recklessness at odds with her usual self, the pensioner resorts to risky measures to make quick cash and potentially turn the tables on her tormenters, in a caustic vision of contemporary Bulgaria that teeters between tragifarce and suspense thriller.

The gargantuan monument honoring the Communist-era Founders of the Bulgarian State towers over Blaga’s home city of Shumen. When she makes the laborious trek up the stairs to the cubist bulk, she appears even more tiny and inconsequential against its unyielding concrete than she usually does in the engulfing vastness of the urban landscape (lensed in dour browns and greens by Vesselin Hristov). Everywhere she turns, her fellow citizens make her feel small, and compound her humiliation. Newspaper headlines and university colleagues call her out for stupidity for falling for the elaborate scam, adding to her shame and victimisation. The relentless nature of these assaults on her dignity lend the film an air of perverse provocation, though Skorcheva’s strong screen presence and gutsy performance, along with Komanderev’s visceral outrage at entrenched inequality targeting society’s most vulnerable, are enough to engross the audience A twist ending arguably pushes both credibility and cynicism a step too far. The film’s one-note grimness may hurt its breakthrough arthouse prospects, even as its refusal to console audiences with a hopeful end is bound to strike some as a maverick act of political courage.

Although Blaga is 70, her pension is not enough to comfortably retire on. She gives private Bulgarian lessons to an Armenian refugee (Rozalia Abgarian) who fled life under bombs in Artsakh and is trying to build a stable future in the European Union, cramming for the requisite language exam for citizenship. Blaga is skeptical that Bulgaria could be a desirable destination for anyone, as she considers it mired in its own kind of war — a damning judgment the director appears to share. With her savings lost and an ageist employment climate that, despite her skills, seriously limits her prospects, she finds that a loan shark and a pawn shop cannot help her meet the shortfall, because the unscrupulous cemetery plot dealer keeps shifting the down payment goalposts. Blaga’s son, who she connects with for phone chats and who is no sweet-talker, lives in the States, too wrapped up in his own schemes to be of aid. Blaga’s shift from gullibility to wily street smarts stretches belief as she goes undercover to take jobs for the very criminal network that did a number on her. But it encapsulates the reality that crime and corruption become normalised options in a broken society with no functional welfare state or informal safety nets. Burial with respect is little more than a fantasy, in a state where it’s impossible to even live with dignity.

Director: Stephan Komanderev
Writers: Simoen Ventsislavov, Stephan Komanderev
Cast: Eli Skorcheva, Gerasim Georgiev, Rozalia Abgarian, Ivan Barnev, Stefan Denolyubov, Ivaylo Hristov
Producers: Stephan Komanderev, Katya Trichkova
Cinematography: Vesselin Hristov
Editor: Nina Altaparmakova
Music: Kalina Vasileva
Sound: Johannes Doberenz
Production companies: Argo Film (Bulgaria), 42film (Germany)
Sales: Heretic Outreach
Venue: Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (Crystal Globe competition)
In Bulgarian
114 minutes

The film debuted as part of the Crystal Globe Competition at this year’s Karlovy Vary International Film Festival and should find itself going on to unnerve audiences elsewhere with its depiction of a young woman who is apparently infatuated with a man accused of a series of grisly murders of young girls. Potentially one that will be divisive both for the general subject matter and its ambiguous finale, it is nonetheless an excellent stomach-churner that burrows deep beneath the skin.

The film begins with the first morning of an already infamous murder trial, where Ludovic Chevalier (Maxwell McCabe-Lokos) stands accused of the torture and murder of three young women, all of which were recorded and broadcast on the dark web in the ‘red rooms’ of the title. In attendance in the courtroom, sitting in the public gallery, is Kelly-Anne (Juliette Gariépy). As the opening remarks are made and we hear the extent of the alleged crimes, the camera gradually creeps in on Kelly-Anne’s face, as she stares fixedly and emotionlessly at Chevaliler. Returning to the courtroom every day – Kelly-Anne’s income derives from sporadic modelling gigs and a penchant for online poker – she soon becomes acquainted with another young woman in regular attendance, Clementine (Laurie Babin). Where Clementine is clearly an ardent believer in Chevalier’s innocence, Kelly-Anne seems to be less convinced, and thus question persists as to why she is there.

Actually reading Kelly-Anne’s motivations is nigh on impossible. Apart from in a few key scenes, she remains inscrutable – a character onto whom the audience, and other people within the world of the film, project their own visions and assumptions. Gariépy does a fine job of handling this task, making sure that Kelly-Anne’s fascination is never in doubt – the subtle flicker as her eyes widen in some intangible form of excitement is a recurring visual beat – but the impulses behind it remind obscured. There are instances in which her air of detachment becomes menacing: in one sequence she matter-of-factly uses the dark web to hack into the emails and WiFi of one of the victims’ parents, before minimising a picture of the murdered girl to load up a workout video on YouTube. A later sequence sees Kelly-Anne walk into the courtroom wearing what is effectively victim cosplay – a blonde wig, contact lenses, false braces on her teeth and a school uniform to resemble the three girls – and it is absolutely chilling.

The visuals are equally cool and calculated. Vincent Biron shoots primarily in cold or muted colours, finding visual interest in the reflections of Montreal’s city lights on the glass of broad windows in Kelly-Anne’s high-rise apartment or washes of saturation in the reds and blues reflected on her face by her computer screens. These choices feel as though they’ve been made to inhabit the world as seen by the protagonist – “money is just numbers inside a computer,” she tells Clementine at one point, “I’m not bad with numbers.” Even the courtroom itself is excessively modern and sleekly designed, as if it was the backdrop of a fashion magazine shoot.

What all this means for the veracity of what we see remains unclear and later scenes play with the potential of slippages between what is real and what is fantasy. Her continued attendance at the trial begins to have real-world implications, but Kelly-Anne seems further and further removed from such concerns. There are various references to Arthurian legend – particularly in Kelly-Anne’s electronic assistant being named Guenièvre and her dark web username being LadyofShallott. The fact that the defendant’s name is ‘chevalier’, which can be translated as ‘knight’ feels pertinent, and there are passages where it feels as though Red Rooms is observing the unravelling of some twisted fairy tale, at least from Kelly-Anne’s perspective.

One of the most contentious elements of Red Rooms may well be its final act in which Kelly-Anne begins attempting to track down the third of the red room videos on the dark web – only two have been found and submitted as evidence in the trial. There are various ways that the ending can be read, and Plante intentionally leaves things highly ambiguously to prompt further debate. What it also does is means that the uncomfortable atmosphere of the film doesn’t abate, giving it the ability to linger long beneath the skin.

Director, screenplay: Pascal Plante
Cast: Juliette Gariépy, Laurie Babin, Elisabeth Locas, Maxwell McCabe-Lokos
Producer: Dominique Dussault
Cinematography: Vincent Biron
Editing: Jonah Malak
Music: Dominique Plante
Sound: Martyne Morin, Olivier Calvert, Stéphane Bergeron
Art Director: Laura Nhem
Production companies: Nemesis Films (Canada)
Venue: Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (Crystal Globe)
In French, English
118 minutes

Al descubrir que ni la iglesia ni el estado ni los representantes de la tribu- que solo se ocupan de su propio bienestar- acudirán en su ayuda en la búsqueda de justicia por el asesinato de su padre, se da cuenta de que se necesitará otra fuente de poder que la proteja y comienza a reconectarse con su propia identidad. Pablo Larraín, una mano experta en retratar el pasado de Chile en su momento más oscuro, se une como productor a Brujería, que nos enfrenta a los abusos de poder menos conocidos en el siglo XIX y no a la dictadura militar de los años 70 y 80.

El encuadre de Murray de esta muy política historia, maximiza su atractivo universal y alegórico. Si bien está basada en hechos reales, se apoya en los giros del género para invocar de manera efectiva el suspenso atmosférico y espeluznante de una fábula de brujería sobrenatural. Se usa el folclore chilote para sumergirnos en una historia inquietante de retribución anticolonial que debería atrapar por igual a los aficionados a la historia y a los del horror. Los bosques húmedos y cubiertos de musgo, los cielos grises y las costas frías y austeras de Chiloé, son capturados de manera impresionante por la directora de fotografía  María Secco. El tono que se crea es poderoso y amenazador, apoyado por una partitura de cuerdas atonales con toques siniestros y proféticos, como bandadas de pájaros negros que vuelan en círculos.

Veliz Caileo interpreta a Rosa con una serenidad estoica propia de una joven que aprende a canalizar su rabia y su pena con una formidable voluntad. Busca la ayuda de dos poderosos colonos de la isla, el hipócrita alcalde Acevedo (Francisco Núñez), que está buscando una manera de escapar de este remoto puesto de avanzada, y el sacerdote local.  Ambos deciden pasar por alto el papel de los humanos en la muerte de su padre, temiendo el riesgo de comprometerse y debilitar su influencia corrupta. Una mayor oportunidad de acción y recursos llega cuando entra en contacto con  Mateo (Daniel Antivilo). un huilliche mayor y hosco. Mateo es  experto en los manejos de la isla, y no quiere exponerla a demasiados riesgos; pero no puede contener su terca naturaleza  cuando Rosa descubre que él practica extraños rituales de curación y que encabeza La Recta Provincia, un movimiento rebelde clandestino que salvaguarda los derechos nativos y el autogobierno frente a un tribunal punitivo, lleno de tratos sucios que reclama el dominio sobre todos los habitantes de la isla, reconozcan o no sus leyes y juicios.

La iniciación de Rosa en el grupo se desencadena con la presentación de Aurora (Neddiel Muñoz Millalonco), una mujer muy versada en los secretos del bosque. Se rumora que los indígenas de la isla cambian de forma, son capaces de transmutarse a sí mismos y a otros en animales. Cuando los hijos pequeños de Stefan desaparecen en circunstancias misteriosas y espeluznantes, se desata la furia de los colonos – complementada con una sangrienta escena de tortura en la playa-. Los contornos indefinidos de la identidad cambiante son un coro de diálogo evocador y un ingrediente visual inquietante en una práctica mágica que se amplía desde trenzas de cuerda plisada hasta pieles humanas.

Rosa usa la percepción despectiva de los colonos sobre ella que la consideran “solo una india” para pasar desapercibida, mientras planea vengar a su padre y asegurar la liberación de Mateo. Borrar la cultura originaria y su recuerdo es el arma colonial;  ver y ser visto significa claramente una liberación. Una leyenda existente en  Chiloé, cuenta de un duelo de brujería entre un navegante vasco y un curandero local, que llevó a que un libro de hechizos europeos terminara en manos indígenas; esta historia se incorpora a la narrativa del conocimiento en rápida expansión de Rosa. Más allá de cualquier emocionante dimensión esotérica, Brujería tiene mucho que ver con el creciente sentido de pertenencia ancestral y autorrealización de su joven heroína frente a un dolor sin límites mientras ella  se niega a dejar que esto termine con su futuro. La película trabaja bien sus  encantamientos en el nivel del horror convencional, pero en última instancia es mucho más: una historia de despertar político y representación de madurez, en una batalla contra la opresión patriarcal y étnica.

Dirección: Christopher Murray
Guion: Christopher Murray, Pablo Paredes
Productores: Juan de Dios Larraín, Pablo Larraín, Rocío Jadue, Nicolas Celis
Editor: Paloma López
Fotografía: Maria Secco
Elenco: Valentina Veliz Caileo, Daniel Antivilo, Sebastián Hulk, Daniel Muñoz, Neddiel Muñoz Millalonco
Dirección de arte: Patricia Pardo
Diseño de producción: Bernardita Baeza
Música: Leonardo Heiblum
Compañías productoras: Fábula (Chile), The Match Factory (Alemania), Pimienta Films (México)
Ventas: The Match Factory
Muestra: Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (Horizons)
En alemán, mapudungan, español
101 minutes

The film recently made its bow in Karlovy Vary as part of the Crystal Globe competition and its blend of awkward and goofy comedy paired with its multivalent commentaries on the social dynamics at play throughout would suggest its likely to find admirers at festivals and beyond, particularly those with a weakness for uncomfortable situation comedy.

The duo at the film’s centre are Vera (Asta Kamma August) and André (Herbert Nordrum), partners in business and life who are the co-founders of a new app designed to raise awareness of women’s health issues. They’re a fairly affluent pair, who work well together albeit that André has a habit of speaking over, or making decisions for, his other half. They’re progressive types, whose relatively privileged background comes to bear when Vera’s mother pulls some strings to get them into a selective pitching workshop called Shake Up where they’ll be amongst several start-ups being coached by the influential Julian (David Fukamachi Regnfors) before being introduced to potential investors. Before they leave, Vera visits a psychotherapist for help kicking her smoking habit, but comes away with an additional sense of self-empowerment which manifests as a thorough lack of social inhibitions.

Kamma August manages the transition well; her Vera goes from a wallflower who is principled but lacks the confidence to stand up for herself, to someone with scarce regard for the impression she is casting on others. Although there are a few scenes that begin to hint at the change – she’s slightly more assertive with her mother, and her first interaction with the group at Shake Up is looser than its prior iteration. In any case, her swing to someone lacking any social awareness is quite considerable, and the actress’s performance holds it all together. She’s excellent in the few early scenes in which she bites her tongue and submira, but even better as her behaviour becomes less socially acceptable while she remains oblivious to people’s displeasure.

There is a moment of exemplary cringe comedy when Vera interrupts a drink André is having with Julian. André is describing his response to a book that Julian recommended when Vera interjects that he had previously said it was boring and that he never even finished it. The balance between the two leads is finely poised in that we can both empathise with the embarrassment that has been undeservedly heaped on André, while we also appreciate the skewering of his pomposity and the unmasking of the bare-faced lie he told. As much as social dynamics might be the main target here, start-up culture and entrepreneurship are given equally sly treatment.

Kamma August and Nordrum play off one another well, particularly after Vera has undergone the therapy. Nordrum is tasked with the straight role and, as such, is the figure required to embody much of the awkwardness and frustrations created by the different actions of his partner. All the while, he is desperately trying to make new connections and secure funding for their app. One scene in which he happens upon an investor dinner and attempts to casually insinuate himself into their conversation is the equivalent of nails down a chalkboard, only outdone by the tension of a climactic scene in which he betrays Vera’s trust. Indeed, that very betrayal leads to a conclusion that packs more of an emotional punch than might be expected earlier in the film.

Far from being a simple film about whether individualism or social compliance are more fruitful avenues to pursue, De Geer and his co-screenwriter Mads Steggers clearly revel in the knottiness of the issue and are keen to expose the significant failings of both approaches for comic and dramatic ends. Vera and André are, in one sense, presented as being in contrast, and Jonathan Bjerstedt’s cinematography regularly casts Kamme August’s face in the light and Nordrum’s facing into shadow. In reality, this is a work about the complex balance that is required to be recognised as an innovator or a free spirit in a world with such clearly delineated protocols. Rather than attempting to summarise the issue, the filmmakers enjoy prodding at the wound, and the film’s ambiguous ending actively undermines any conclusions we might have hoped to neatly draw from it.

Director: Ernst De Geer
Cast: Herbert Nordrum, Asta Kamma August
Producer: Mimmi Spång
Screenplay: Mads Stegger, Ernst De Geer
Cinematography: Jonathan Bjerstedt
Editing: Robert Krantz
Music: Peder Kjellsby
Sound: Håkon Lammetun, Matias Frøystad
Art Director: Linda Elmborg
Production companies: Garagefilm International, Film I Väst AB (both Sweden), Mer Film AS (Norway), Totem Atelier (France)
Venue: Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (Crystal Globe)
In Swedish, English
98 minutes

From Caroline Taillet’s heart-breaking performance in Maïa Deschamps Oysters to the atavistic striving of Zoel Aschbacher’s stomach-churning satire Fairplay, the programme of award-winners included some stirring moments. Several films, like Rakan Myasi’s Trumpets in the Sky and Hylnur Pálmason’s Nest, will be familiar to festival goers across the past couple of years. Indeed, Pálmason’s film and Ramzi Bashour’s The Trees played at this very festival just last summer. As such, this line-up and the collection of films aimed at younger viewers have undoubtedly gone down well with audiences but brought little of fresh interest to those keen to see new work in the short format.

The third Pragueshorts screening, of newer Czech films, was a little more intriguing, with two pieces in particular warranting extra attention. Both films deal with individuals who become involved in less-than-savoury practices and are forced to come to terms with the decisions they’ve made. In the case of Damián Vondrášek’s Rites, two boys on the social margins have decided to make a bid to join a street gang. Both must decide how far they’re willing to go for acceptance, in this coming-of-age story with the aesthetic of a summer afternoon’s adventure, but far darker possibilities. An even more dangerous gang preside over Martin Kuba’s Vinland, in which a Georgian immigrant labours for Russian mobsters in Prague. An educated man, he has his boss’s trust, but an altruistic act in the name of justice might jeopardise everything.

Arguably, though, the main draw for shorts at Karlovy Vary this year was the selection in the Imagina section, where perhaps the most notable inclusion was a new film by revered auteur Pedro Costa. A strange but compelling piece, The Daughters of Fire concerns three sisters separated by the eruption of the Pico do Fogo on Cape Verde. Here, Costa breaks the screen into a tryptic and casts three singers as the sisters, who intone a lament written in collaboration with a Portuguese early music group, Os Músicos do Tejo. The result is suitably searing.

Several of the other highlights from this year’s Imagina shorts had a playful relationship with reverence and memory. In Erin Weisberger’s In the Heavens and on Earth, the filmmaker takes 16mm images of architecture – notably a Catholic church situated in her local neighbourhood in Montreal — and re-uses them to create a kaleidoscopic portrayal of place. A shimmering work full of flickers and colourful non-figurative compositions, it manages to remain an affectionate portrait, though as the filmmaker explained in her post-film Q&A, some residents may have associations which transform the abstract visuals into something more critical. The veneration of Adrian Duncan’s Prosinecki, which debuted at Rotterdam in January, patiently observes slowed-down footage of the eponymous, elegant, Croatian midfielder. The narration offers the perspective of a younger player, now entering his twilight years, who reflects on the meaning of the beautiful game and the balance between pragmatism and aestheticism. In Robert Prosinecki he finds a player who teaches him the value of both.

Jan Soldat’s Faces of Death takes its reverence in a slightly more direct route, by paying homage to the late, great Christopher Lee. The film is part of an ongoing series of such films – including the likes of Staging Death and Dead Again – which are compilations of death scenes played by esteemed actors across their careers. Lee is generally deemed to be the actor to have perished on screen the most times, from his earlier years with Hammer Horror being staked through the heart in iconic fashion as Dracula, to his later demises in blockbuster franchises like Star Wars and, most crunchingly, The Lord of the Rings. The montage takes in not just Lee’s history but that of cinema, bringing to the fore motifs and trends in the undulating rhythms of film style, through one actor’s overwrought death throes. It is heartening that films as inventive as these are being screened to packed audiences at Karlovy Vary, suggesting there’s a little life left in the old medium yet.

The Film Verdict at KVIFF 57

A Czech co-production with Poland, Slovakia and Serbia, Restore Point also launches this week at two other genre-focussed festivals, Neuchatel in Switzerland and Bucheon in Korea. Czech language dialogue may prove a limiting factor internationally, but the loyal global audience for smart sci-fi cinema should boost its prospects. Domestic cinema release is set for September.

Restore Point takes place in 2041 around an unnamed Central European metropolis. The location is never specified but everybody speaks Czech, which may be a subtle clue. In this quasi-utopian society, medical and computer technology have both progressed to the point where they can virtually cheat death, since anyone who dies in an unnatural or untimely manner can be resurrected by digitally rebooting back to their former self. The catch is this system is only legally permitted using information backed up during the last 48 hours, as earlier copies are unstable and dangerous.

Not everybody supports this human reset system. River of Life, an underground terrorist group led by Toffer (Milan Ondrik), fight for a more “natural” kind of life and death by kidnapping victims, waiting for their back-up window to expire, then murdering them. Like an extreme version of vaccine deniers, these anti-immortality hacktivists are also targeting the state-owned Institute of Restoration, led by slippery tycoon Rohan (Václav Neužil), in a bid to erase millions of personal files. Amplifying this threat, the Institute’s chief computer scientist David (Matej Hádek) has just been murdered in a roadside ambush alongside his wife. Oddly, neither seems to have made recent back-up files, so they cannot legally be revived.

The heroine of Restore Point is kick-ass detective Emma Trichinosis (Andrea Mylohyoid), whose murder investigation uncovers a murky plot tied to the Institute’s privatisation plans, off-grid rural communes that exist outside the digital reboot system, and a bizarre love triangle linking killer and victim. Trochinowska forms a grudging partnership with a slick Europol detective Martin (Václav Neužil), though the trust between them is flimsy, as everybody in this tangle of conspiratorial secrets seems to have their own opaque agenda.

The visual effects on Restore Point are world class, immersing viewers in a plausible near-future Europe where self-driving cars, holographic videophone conversations and gravestones fitted with video screens are all in everyday use. Special credit is due to production designer Ondrej Lipenský for the background cityscapes, blending real Prague architecture with superbly imagined techo-brutalist skyscrapers not too dissimilar from the real-life construction projects currently popping up across China and the Middle East.

Both visually and thematically, there are inevitable and probably deliberate echoes here of classic future-noir thrillers like Blade Runner (1982), Total Recall (1990) and Minority Report (2002). All three, not coincidentally, based on the work of cult sci-fi author Philip K. Dick, who was similarly interested in memory, mortality and the fuzzy borders between man and machine.

Restore Point is a solid thriller built around an intelligent premise, a capable cast and strikingly good VFX. The action sequences are expertly handled, even if the more talk-heavy scenes drag in places, especially during the ploddy mid-section, which dampens the tension with too much sombre exposition. The screenplay also falls back on some over-familiar archetypes from the crime-genre canon: the gruff veteran police chief who berates Trochinowska for disobeying orders, the haughty corporate boss with heavily underscored villain credentials, the suave detective who may be playing a double game, and so on.

Likewise the plot slips a little too comfortably into generic sci-fi tropes, including the mandatory scene set in a subterranean techno club peopled by lowlife party monsters with wild hair, lurid tattoos and glowing neon teeth. Vintage 1990s dystopian cyberpunk signifiers abound. That said, Restore Point has a charmingly European art-house attitude at heart. Any film that hinges on the evils of privatising a socialised medicine system, featuring a heroine whose chief pleasure appears to be playing Debussy’s Claire de Lune on the piano, is a long way from Hollywood cliché.

Director: Robert Hloz
Cast: Andrea Mohylová, Matej Hádek, Milan Ondrik,Václav Neužil, Karel Dobrý, Agáta Kryštufková, Katarzyna Zawadzka, Iveta Dušková, Jan Vlasák, Adam Vacula, Jan Jankovský, Lech Dyblik
Screenwriters: Tomislav Cecka, Zdenek Jecelín, Robert Hloz
Producer: Jan Kallista
Cinematography: Filip Marek
Production design: Ondrej Lipenský
Costume design: Ivan Stekla
Visual effects supervisor: Michal Krecek
Music: Jan Šléška
Production company: Film Kolektiv (Czech)
Venue: Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (Special Screenings)
In Czech
111 minutes

The Kier short, Staging Death, premiered at the Quinzaine in Cannes in May 2022, while the Lee film, Faces of Death, is part of the Imagina lineup at Karlovy Vary film festival this week. Amusingly, despite the topic, Soldat doesn’t have a favorite Christopher Lee death scene, or even a favorite film starring the late British horror icon. “I loved doing the research, as a documentarian I’m very nerdy about compiling lists and whatnot, but I’m not really a fan of Lee’s roles”, he tells TFV. Still, it made sense for him to explore the subject via the erstwhile portrayer of Dracula, Count Dooku and Saruman. “There’s a sense of film history through the evolution of his career, and his death scenes, same as with Udo Kier who’s had a similarly rich filmography.” As suggested by the title, the short is more about Lee’s performance rather than the death scene itself, as opposed to the Kier version. “Yes, indeed”, says Soldat, adding “It’s also a reference to the amount of monsters and villains he played.”

The two films follow a similar structure, in that the scenes are not edited chronologically, but according to themes. In Lee’s case, that means multiple scenes in a row where he gets burned, for example, followed by others where he’s stabbed. There’s also another reasoning behind this, explains the director: “I wanted to separate the black-and-white films from the ones in color, and there was a time when he alternated between them.”

The major difference in methodology? Soldat didn’t watch all the films all the way through this time. “I did it for the other actors, and with Udo Kier, who has more than 200 films on his CV, it took an entire year, because for some of his work I had to travel to Düsseldorf or Amsterdam for private viewings, and one film he made is only viewable on a VHS copy in Toronto, and I couldn’t afford to fly to Canada just for that. So with Lee, even though I had all the films quite easily, either on Blu-Ray or via legal digital platforms, I fast-forwarded a lot, because I no longer had the time to sit through all of it.”

Feedback from viewers suggests the two shorts are both hilarious – especially Staging Death, given Kier’s penchant for elaborate, over-the-top on-screen demises. They are also, in their own way, strangely moving. This also connects to Soldat’s structuring decisions, which differ from his usual methods: “With my documentaries, even though it is obviously my subjective viewpoint, my aim is to never force or manipulate emotion. With these films I realized that was not possible, because by manipulating those specific images and rearranging them in a certain sequence there is an emotional component attached to it.” And what’s next? Could there be a similar series through a different prism? “Possibly, but I don’t plan these projects in advance, so it will all depend on whether a certain angle will pop up in my mind that I find interesting.”

Premiering as part of the main Crystal Globe Competition at this year’s Karlovy Vary, the film follows a familiar trajectory, but a layered screenplay, pristine cinematography and strong performances across the board make this a gripping, emblematic story of hardship and the overwhelming force of social power structures. Anchored by a fine performance from relative newcomer, Hamid Reza Abbasi, it feels destined for a long festival life.

German-Iranian filmmaker Karamizade taps into a vein of morality play that has been made famous over the past several years by the work of Asghar Farhadi. Here, the quandary is less about the relative ethics of a complex situation, and more a parable about the pressures placed on people – especially when they come from less affluent backgrounds – in systems of oppression. The director has spoken about wanting to offer a perspective that speaks about the struggles of young people in Iran today. Through different elements of this story, he addresses the long fingers of traditional, patriarchal values, presents a microcosm of dictatorial regimes, and highlights the long-standing structural inequalities that serve to crush hope.

The story follows star-crossed lovers, Amir (Hamid Reza Abbasi) and Narges (Sadaf Asgari), a young couple who live in a town near the Caspian Sea. Amir is from a humbler background than Narges, and while she is keen for him to speak to her parents about their potential marriage, he wants to make sure he’s in a better financial position first. This leads Amir to take a job at a fishery an hour or so up the coast, where he quickly becomes involved in less-than-savoury activity, aiding in poaching and couriering illegal caviar into town.

Hamid Reza Abbasi is perfectly cast in the lead role, convincing both as the young romantic hero whose charm and ideals have swept Narges off her feet, but also when the eyes are hollowed out and the cheeks sunken by what he is forced to do to thrive. At the film’s opening, he is working for a catering company in town but is fired when he refuses to follow his boss’s orders and halt a wedding party to demand immediate payment upfront. Reza Abbasi has just the right boyish appeal to play the naïf and is suitably charismatic in his early scenes with Asgari, with whom he shares great chemistry, but is also capable of the gravitas to make Amir’s slow descent into criminality hum with pathos.

At first, his time on the fisheries is primarily back-breaking work for little reward, as he sees how the bosses count wads of cash in the office while he and the other labourers, like his bunkmate Omid (Keyvan Mohamadi), have their already minuscule wages docked or withheld. Soon, Amir comes to understand the fishery’s real work – both through their illegal nocturnal angling to meet the demands for black market caviar and through their ferrying of other cargo, such as the dissident writer fleeing the regime. As Narges’ family begin to consider other options, Amir finds himself becoming ever more embroiled in the fishery’s nefarious activities in a desperate bid to prosper.

As well as Amir and Narges, the Caspian Sea itself becomes something of a character in Karamizade’s film, perhaps the clearest beneficiary of Ashkan Ashkani’s sharp but moody photography. In the opening sequence, Amir swims playfully in the sea but Narges fears the potential threat of its roiling currents. When Amir begins his new life as a fisherman, the seemingly ever-present ocean becomes both the provider of their precious bounty – one which they pillage to brutal effect – and a threatening presence lapping at the edge of the frame. It is a road to salvation and a brick wall all at once, particularly to those seeking passage across its dangerous waters. The positions Amir, Omid and Narges are ultimately put in force them to make difficult, at times perilous, decisions to secure their futures in the battle for a brighter tomorrow.

Director, screenplay: Behrooz Karamizade
Cast: Hamid Reza Abbasi, Sadaf Asgari, Keyvan Mohamadi, Pantea Panahiha
Producers: Eva Kemme, Ansgar Frerich, Uschi Feldges
Cinematography: Ashkan Ashkani
Editing: Anne Jünemann
Music: John Gürtler, Jan Misere
Sound: Sebastian Tesch
Production companies: BASIS BERLIN Filmproduktion GmbH, Living Pictures Production, ZDF / Kleines Fernsehspiel (all Germany), Rainy Pictures (Iran), ARTE (France)
Venue: Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (Crystal Globe)
In Farsi
101 minutes

We follow the day-to-day work of Milan-based professor Cristina Cattaneo, who runs Italy’s first forensic anthropology lab, using science to help solve crimes and missing person cases. She actively campaigns for changes to EU laws to make it easier to identify the unnamed human remains found every year — the “pure unknown,” as she calls them — and afford them the dignity of a proper burial. This is a humanitarian issue that pertains just as much to the living, as without identification surviving relatives are left with the debilitating mental health strain of “ambiguous loss,” when they do not know the fate of their missing loved ones. Cattaneo trains students in different ways to gather data to match bodies with missing persons. There is a haunting sadness to details. We scrutinise a butterfly tattoo on an unidentified corpse, so quirkily specific, yet now so asunder from any personality or backstory it had once reflected. 

One cold case, full of sorrow, is representative of lives on the margins, and individuals that can disappear so anonymously because wider society cares very little for their welfare and refuses any responsibility for their fates. Mbaresa Kumbria was an Albanian woman who was nineteen years old when she fell off her family’s radar in 1996, after she was forced into the Italian sex trade. She had stayed missing ever since, despite her sister’s best efforts to locate her. Improvements to DNA technology mean Cattaneo and her colleagues are finally able to identify her remains, so that her sister can see and claim them, in emotional scenes of grief and closure. Meanwhile, thousands of bodies still lie buried without names in European cemeteries. Cattaneo also works on the remains of a fourth-century Christian saint — and the brocaded luxuriance bestowed upon the body by the Church provides a stark contrast.

When a Libyan fishing boat sank near Sicily in 2015, overcrowded with refugees trying to reach Europe, and was raised from the seabed, Cattaneo was enlisted to help with the dead. The vessel became an art installation, displayed at the Venice Biennale as a symbol of the immigration crisis. The liberal elite could indulge their empathy at the exhibition and feel good about it — but this spectacle of support did not make the fight to identify the bodies any less uphill. The 250 euros per skull it costs for a DNA test, out of reach for impoverished families, is more than governments, under no legal obligation and prioritising living arrivals, wanted to spend. Cattaneo addresses the EU Parliament in the hope of changing attitudes, and initiating a Europe-wide database for cross-referencing the data of the missing and the “pure unknown.”

Cattaneo, motivated by a justice-seeking streak, is a sympathetic protagonist. We feel the wells of emotion along with her that quietly break through her focused and matter-of-fact, professional demeanour. There is a persuasive, campaigning dimension to this doc, but it is never didactic or drily overloaded with data. Instead, it is a plea for basic humanity, as it individualises “pure unknowns” and gives their lives (and deaths) weight and worth back — even if they are yet to have their names returned to them, and their connection back to the living world restored.

Directors, screenwriters: Valentina Cicogna, Mattia Colombo
Producers: Sebastiano Luca Insinga, Chiara Nicoletti
Editor: Valentina Cicogna
Cinematography: Jacopo Loiodice
Sound: Simone Paolo Olivero, Paolo Benvenuti
Production companies: Jump Cut (Italy), Amka Films Productions (Switzerland), Sisyfos Production (Sweden), RSI (Switzerland)
Sales: Deckert Distribution
Venue: Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (Horizons)
In English, Italian
93 minutes