Records were broken at the 42nd Karlovy Vary International Film
Festival (29 June to 7 July 2007). Festival president Jiri Bartoska
and artistic director Eva Zaoralova welcomed 12,000 accredited guests,
500 more than in the previous year. Another record was passed when 580
journalists registered for KVIFF, 300 more than in 2006. And who
really knows how many students and young cineastes flocked to Karlovy
Vary from across the Czech and Slovak Republics, many of them sleeping
in the park in tents provided by the festival and sometimes under the
stairs of the Hotel Thermal when it rained. Even a children's play pen
was added in the Thermal Hotel, the festival headquarters. With lines
forming before the box offices as early at seven in the morning, the
only problem young cineastes had was picking four films to view with a
Participation ID Pass – over 10,000 issued in 2007! – after which they
were often given permission to sit on the floor at any one of the
festival's 13 venues.

Hollywood stars, too, have taken a liking to the spa festival. Renee
Zellweger was on hand for the screening of Chris Noonan's Miss Potter
(USA), in which she plays British author-illustrator Beatrix Potter
(1866-1943), the creator of the children's book The Tale of Peter
Rabbit (published in 1902). Zellweger returned the next day to hand
veteran Czech puppet-and-animation filmmaker Brestislav Pojar a
Crystal Globe for "outstanding artistic contribution to world cinema."
Another honorary globe was handed to Danny DeVito, whose appearance in
Jake Paltrow's comedy The Good Night closed the festival. As warmly as
these stars were received by the festival audience, nothing could
match the adulation showered upon the "man of the hour" on closing
night. A standing ovation greeted the presence of Vaclav Havel,
formerly the Czech President, who is best known abroad as one of the
initiators of the "Charta 77" human rights declaration, for which he
had spent five years in prison under communist rule. The
writer-dramatist, whose father had built Barrandov Film Studio in
pre-war days, was also instrumental in bringing his friend Milos
Forman back to Prague to help revitalize the Czech film industry in
the wake of the Velvet Revolution. No wonder he's a legend in his own
time!

According to program director Juliette Zacharova, nine world
premieres surfaced among the 250 films screened – another sure sign of
Karlovy Vary's increasingly favored status among bigtime film
festivals. Today, Karlovy Vary serves as a welcomed respite from those
icy winters at the Berlinale and the waiting lines at Cannes.
Furthermore, since December of 1989, when the Velvet Revolution swept
through Czechoslovakia, the city's historical sites – hotels, villas,
baths, monuments – have all been restored to their pristine glory.
Among these restorations is the splendid rococo Divaldo Theater, built
in 1886 and opened back then with a performance of Mozart's The
Wedding of Figaro. Indeed, the Divadlo is an appropriate festival
venue for "Treasures from the National Film Archive." This year, Fritz
Lang's two-part silent sinister classic, The Spiders I (The Golden
Lake) & II (The Diamond Ship) (1919/20), was programmed with live
orchestral accompaniment.

As press conferences go, nothing surpassed the give-and-take at the
"New Hollywood" gathering. To begin with, not many in the young crowd
had ever seen any of the eight films in the retrospective. But even
festival veterans lined up for tickets to Peter Bogdanovich's The Last
Picture Show (1971), Hal Ashley's Harold and Maude (1971), Monte
Hellman's Two-Lane Blacktop (1971), George Lucas's American Graffiti
(1973), Terrence Malick's Badlands (1973), Martin Scorsese's Mean
Streets (1973), Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation (1974), and
Steven Spielberg's The Sugarland Express (1974). Cybill Shepherd at
the press session talked about her "Svengali" relationship with Peter
Bogdanovich. Bud Cort remembered how nervous he was while working with
Ruth Gordon on Harold and Maude. And Monte Hellman reminisced on
trying to direct actor Sam Peckinpah in China 9, Liberty 37 (1978). In
passing, some jokes were made about the visible wear-and-tear on the
prints found in the Czech Film Archive. But for some die-hard film
devotees scratchy old prints made the viewing experience all the more
enjoyable!

Last year, Karlovy Vary hit paydirt by inviting the prestigious
Sundance Film Festival to present past award winners, both features
and documentaries, from the festival archive. This year, Karlovy Vary
linked its fortunes to the Sochi Open Russian Film Festival. Just a
few weeks after Alexei Popogrebsky's Prostyje veshchi (Simple Things)
was awarded an armful of prizes at Sochi, the film garnered several
citations at Karlovy Vary. The Best Actor Award went to Sergei
Puskepalis, with an additional Special Mention to noted stage
personality Leonid Bronevoi. A poignant drama about a low-paid
hospital anaesthetist (Puskepalis), who lives with his wife and
teenaged daughter in a crowded communal apartment, Simple Things takes
on color and interest when the beleaguered husband and father accepts
a side job caring for a crusty old actor (Bronevoi) in the last stages
of his cancer ailment. Their reluctant affiliation eventually opens up
unexpected vistas. Simple Things also won the FIPRESCI (International
Critics) Award and the Ecumenical Award.

Karlovy Vary thrives on a bundle of awards and juries. Besides the
topliner International Jury, headed by Variety editor Peter Bart,
noted personalities were summoned to judge the competitions in the
Documentary and East of the West (Central and Eastern European Films)
sections. These, in addition to the non statuary juries: FIPRESCI,
Ecumenical, Netpac (Network for Promotion of Asian Cinema), FICC (Film
Clubs), Europa Cinemas Label (European Exhibitors), Independent Camera
(Forum of Independents), and Pravo (Audience Prize). The Netpac Jury,
headed by Philip Cheah of the Singapore film festival, had to consider
38 films from the Near and Far East, entries scattered across nearly
all of Karlovy Vary's 20 non-competitive sections: Open Eyes,
Horizons, Another View, Forum of Independents, Variety Critics'
Choice, Czech Films, Midnight Screenings, and Shochiku Nouvelle Vague.
The award went to Eran Kolirin's Bikur hatizmoret (The Band's Visit)
(Israel/France), an amusing tongue-in-cheek tale about an Egyptian
ceremonial band lost on the byways of Israel.

The Crystal Globe, KVIFF's Grand Prix, was awarded to Baltasar
Kormakur's Myrin (Jar City) (Iceland/Germany). A film noir crime
thriller based on a bestseller, Jar City had already won four
Icelandic Edda Awards and had broken home box office records before
arriving at Karlovy Vary. Pegged to parallel stories, the thriller
features a loner detective on a murder case with monkeys on his own
back (his daughter is a drug addict) and a genetic scientist
researching the causes behind his daughter's mysterious brain illness
(maybe tied to the death of a four year-old girl 30 years ago). The
film was also awarded the FICC Prize.

Unfortunately, one exceptional film, reportedly favored by the KVIFF
selection committee, could not be programmed in the Competition.
Because Khoonbazi (Mainline) (Iran), codirected by Rakhsham
Bani-Etemad and Mohsen Abdolvalab, had previously been shown at
Toronto, it ended up in the Horizons section instead. The story of a
mother's painful ordeal in coping with her daughter's drug addiction,
Mainline is the first film in Iran to deal specifically with that
taboo theme among the young. It features Baran Kosari, Rakhsham
Bani-Etemad's daughter, in the role of Sara, a middle-class
bride-to-be who knows she needs help but keeps falling back into her
old ways. A stellar performance in a spellbinding and agonizing film
shot mostly on the streets of Tehran.

The Czech entry in the competition, Jan Sverak's Vratne lahve
(Empties) (Czech Republic/Denmark/UK), stars the director's father in
a light comedy. Zdenek Sverak, who had written the script to fit his
character, plays a cantankerous senior citizen who throws his teaching
career overboard to take a simple job in a supermarket behind a
counter for returnable bottles – the "empties" in the title. There,
positioned at a quaint crossway of life, he finds a way to solve most
of the problems of customers and colleagues without realizing that he
has pretty much made a mess of his own life – to say nothing of
overlooking the needs of his long suffering wife and divorced
daughter, who has come home to roost. Besides being voted the Pravo
Audience Prize, Empties also merited for Zdenek Sverak the screenplay
award.

The prize for Best Long Documentary (over 30 minutes) was awarded to
Lucie Kralova's Ztracena dovolena (Lost Holiday) (Czech Republic). Two
years in the making by a student at the Prague Film School (FAMU),
Lost Holiday unfolds like an investigative detective story. The tale
begins back in 2001, when a suitcase was found in Sweden that
contained 22 rolls of negative film that chronicle in 756 photographs
the journey of seven unidentified Asians on a trip through Europe.
Eventually, with the help of sinologists and tourist agencies, Kralova
was able to determine that the group came from China and that its
leader was probably a provincial government official. Also, judging
from locations in the background, the group had journeyed from
northern Germany to Norway. This neatly reconstructed dossier
fascinates, particularly because of how and where the photos were
taken, their style of dress, and the interaction among the persons in
the entourage. Finally, since photo identification has yet to be
determined, Lucie Kralova's next stop as a researching documentarist
will be China.

A Special Mention was given to Andrei Paounov's Problemat s komarite
i drugi istorii (The Mosquito Problem and Other Stories)
(Bulgaria/Germany/USA). Filmed in Belene on the Danube, where giant
mosquitos (nicknamed "zanzar" for their nerve-racking buzz) torment
the population, extermination trucks regularly fumigate the streets on
humid summer days. As for the "other stories" in the title, one proves
embarrassing for the town officials – for Belene used to be the site
of a forced labor camp under communist rule, whose superintendent
later went on to become the town's mayor when democracy was installed.
Other characters in Paounov's delightful Mosquito Problem and Other
Stories are colorful in an absurd vein. A Cuban worker was stranded
here when plans for a nuclear plant were abandoned. An Italian priest
cares for a small flock of elderly parishioners. A piano tuner
confesses his love for both Chopin and boogie-woogie. And a dance
instructor visits the town on occasion to help break the monotony of
the place.

Two renown documentarists were singled out for citations in the under
30 minute category. Sergei Loznitsa's Artel (Russia), awarded Best
Short Documentary, was filmed during an ice-cold winter at a frozen
lake near the White Sea. The "artel" in the title refers to a communal
fishing enterprize still practiced in Russia. Nowadays, however, when
four young fishermen have (literally) to saw their through the ice to
drop their nets, their struggle constitutes not only a traditional way
of life, but it also hints of a hard-won livelihood as well.
Loznitsa's long takes and use of black-and-white photography adds a
poetic dimension to the documentary. Laila Pakalnina's Teodors
(Theodore) (Latvia) also scores as a quiet meditation on the meaning
of life. In a Latvian village an octogenarian peddles his bicycle
every morning to a bus stop, where he shares the silence of other
oldtimers as they watch the day slowly pass by.
Ognjen Svilicic's Armin (Croatia/Germany/Bosnia-Herzegovina) was
awarded the First Prize in the East of the West Competition. In this
tragicomedy, remarkable for its subtle social and political overtones,
a father journeys with his 14-year-old son from a village in
Herzegovina to Zagreb to help him fulfill his dream – to act and
perform with his accordion in an international movie. The German film
director, however, is more interested in the father's experiences as
an eyewitness to tragic events during the war years. It's what the
media feeds on.

Several entries in the East of the West competition heralded the
revival of national cinemas in the "CentEast" region.. Stanislaw
Mucha's Hope (Poland/Germany, 2007), for instance, finally completes
the Dante triptych – Heaven, Hell, Purgatory – that was originally
outlined for international coproduction by the late Krzysztof
Kieslowski and his screenwriter Krzysztof Piesiewicz. Following
Kieslowski's death, the screenplays were passed on to other
filmmakers. In Tom Tykwer's Heaven (Germany/USA, 2002), an English
teacher in Turin (Cate Blanchett) unintentionally commits an act of
terror and is rescued from her fate by the son of the former police
superintendent. In Danis Tanovic L'Enfer (Hell)
(France/Italy/Belgium/Japan, 2005), three sisters (Emmanuelle Beart,
Karin Viard, Marie Gillain) relive their traumatic childhood by virtue
of a shared secret. And now in Stanislaw Mucha's Hope an idealistic
young man (Rafal Fudalej) witnesses the theft of a rare painting from
a Warsaw church, whereupon he resorts to blackmail to have the
treasure turned to its rightful place. Hopefully, this film triptych
will surface in the future on the festival circuit – if only to
determine how faithfully the three directors have explored the
modern-day implications of moral unrest in Dante's classic, The Divine
Comedy.

Badlands (1973), Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets (1973), Francis Ford
Coppola's The Conversation (1974), and Steven Spielberg's The
Sugarland Express (1974). Cybill Shepherd at the press session talked
about her "Svengali" relationship with Peter Bogdanovich. Bud Cort
remembered how nervous he was while working with Ruth Gordon on Harold
and Maude. And Monte Hellman reminisced on trying to direct actor Sam
Peckinpah in China 9, Liberty 37 (1978). In passing, some jokes were
made about the visible wear-and-tear on the prints found in the Czech
Film Archive. But for some die-hard film devotees scratchy old prints
made the viewing experience all the more enjoyable!

Last year, Karlovy Vary hit paydirt by inviting the prestigious
Sundance Film Festival to present past award winners, both features
and documentaries, from the festival archive. This year, Karlovy Vary
linked its fortunes to the Sochi Open Russian Film Festival. Just a
few weeks after Alexei Popogrebsky's Prostyje veshchi (Simple Things)
was awarded an armful of prizes at Sochi, the film garnered several
citations at Karlovy Vary. The Best Actor Award went to Sergei
Puskepalis, with an additional Special Mention to noted stage
personality Leonid Bronevoi. A poignant drama about a low-paid
hospital anaesthetist (Puskepalis), who lives with his wife and
teenaged daughter in a crowded communal apartment, Simple Things takes
on color and interest when the beleaguered husband and father accepts
a side job caring for a crusty old actor (Bronevoi) in the last stages
of his cancer ailment. Their reluctant affiliation eventually opens up
unexpected vistas. Simple Things also won the FIPRESCI (International
Critics) Award and the Ecumenical Award.

Karlovy Vary thrives on a bundle of awards and juries. Besides the
topliner International Jury, headed by Variety editor Peter Bart,
noted personalities were summoned to judge the competitions in the
Documentary and East of the West (Central and Eastern European Films)
sections. These, in addition to the non statuary juries: FIPRESCI,
Ecumenical, Netpac (Network for Promotion of Asian Cinema), FICC (Film
Clubs), Europa Cinemas Label (European Exhibitors), Independent Camera
(Forum of Independents), and Pravo (Audience Prize). The Netpac Jury,
headed by Philip Cheah of the Singapore film festival, had to consider
38 films from the Near and Far East, entries scattered across nearly
all of Karlovy Vary's 20 non-competitive sections: Open Eyes,
Horizons, Another View, Forum of Independents, Variety Critics'
Choice, Czech Films, Midnight Screenings, and Shochiku Nouvelle Vague.
The award went to Eran Kolirin's Bikur hatizmoret (The Band's Visit)
(Israel/France), an amusing tongue-in-cheek tale about an Egyptian
ceremonial band lost on the byways of Israel.

The Crystal Globe, KVIFF's Grand Prix, was awarded to Baltasar
Kormakur's Myrin (Jar City) (Iceland/Germany). A film noir crime
thriller based on a bestseller, Jar City had already won four
Icelandic Edda Awards and had broken home box office records before
arriving at Karlovy Vary. Pegged to parallel stories, the thriller
features a loner detective on a murder case with monkeys on his own
back (his daughter is a drug addict) and a genetic scientist
researching the causes behind his daughter's mysterious brain illness
(maybe tied to the death of a four year-old girl 30 years ago). The
film was also awarded the FICC Prize.

Unfortunately, one exceptional film, reportedly favored by the KVIFF
selection committee, could not be programmed in the Competition.
Because Khoonbazi (Mainline) (Iran), codirected by Rakhsham
Bani-Etemad and Mohsen Abdolvalab, had previously been shown at
Toronto, it ended up in the Horizons section instead. The story of a
mother's painful ordeal in coping with her daughter's drug addiction,
Mainline is the first film in Iran to deal specifically with that
taboo theme among the young. It features Baran Kosari, Rakhsham
Bani-Etemad's daughter, in the role of Sara, a middle-class
bride-to-be who knows she needs help but keeps falling back into her
old ways. A stellar performance in a spellbinding and agonizing film
shot mostly on the streets of Tehran.

The Czech entry in the competition, Jan Sverak's Vratne lahve
(Empties) (Czech Republic/Denmark/UK), stars the director's father in
a light comedy. Zdenek Sverak, who had written the script to fit his
character, plays a cantankerous senior citizen who throws his teaching
career overboard to take a simple job in a supermarket behind a
counter for returnable bottles – the "empties" in the title. There,
positioned at a quaint crossway of life, he finds a way to solve most
of the problems of customers and colleagues without realizing that he
has pretty much made a mess of his own life – to say nothing of
overlooking the needs of his long suffering wife and divorced
daughter, who has come home to roost. Besides being voted the Pravo
Audience Prize, Empties also merited for Zdenek Sverak the screenplay
award.

The prize for Best Long Documentary (over 30 minutes) was awarded to
Lucie Kralova's Ztracena dovolena (Lost Holiday) (Czech Republic). Two
years in the making by a student at the Prague Film School (FAMU),
Lost Holiday unfolds like an investigative detective story. The tale
begins back in 2001, when a suitcase was found in Sweden that
contained 22 rolls of negative film that chronicle in 756 photographs
the journey of seven unidentified Asians on a trip through Europe.
Eventually, with the help of sinologists and tourist agencies, Kralova
was able to determine that the group came from China and that its
leader was probably a provincial government official. Also, judging
from locations in the background, the group had journeyed from
northern Germany to Norway. This neatly reconstructed dossier
fascinates, particularly because of how and where the photos were
taken, their style of dress, and the interaction among the persons in
the entourage. Finally, since photo identification has yet to be
determined, Lucie Kralova's next stop as a researching documentarist
will be China.

A Special Mention was given to Andrei Paounov's Problemat s komarite
i drugi istorii (The Mosquito Problem and Other Stories)
(Bulgaria/Germany/USA). Filmed in Belene on the Danube, where giant
mosquitos (nicknamed "zanzar" for their nerve-racking buzz) torment
the population, extermination trucks regularly fumigate the streets on
humid summer days. As for the "other stories" in the title, one proves
embarrassing for the town officials – for Belene used to be the site
of a forced labor camp under communist rule, whose superintendent
later went on to become the town's mayor when democracy was installed.
Other characters in Paounov's delightful Mosquito Problem and Other
Stories are colorful in an absurd vein. A Cuban worker was stranded
here when plans for a nuclear plant were abandoned. An Italian priest
cares for a small flock of elderly parishioners. A piano tuner
confesses his love for both Chopin and boogie-woogie. And a dance
instructor visits the town on occasion to help break the monotony of
the place.

Two renown documentarists were singled out for citations in the under
30 minute category. Sergei Loznitsa's Artel (Russia), awarded Best
Short Documentary, was filmed during an ice-cold winter at a frozen
lake near the White Sea. The "artel" in the title refers to a communal
fishing enterprize still practiced in Russia. Nowadays, however, when
"four young fishermen have (literally) to SAW their way through the ice etc."
todrop their nets, their struggle constitutes not only a traditional way
of life, but it also hints of a hard-won livelihood as well.

Loznitsa's long takes and use of black-and-white photography adds a
poetic dimension to the documentary. Laila Pakalnina's Teodors
(Theodore) (Latvia) also scores as a quiet meditation on the meaning
of life. In a Latvian village an octogenarian peddles his bicycle
every morning to a bus stop, where he shares the silence of other
oldtimers as they watch the day slowly pass by.

Ognjen Svilicic's Armin (Croatia/Germany/Bosnia-Herzegovina) was
awarded the First Prize in the East of the West Competition. In this
tragicomedy, remarkable for its subtle social and political overtones,
a father journeys with his 14-year-old son from a village in
Herzegovina to Zagreb to help him fulfill his dream – to act and
perform with his accordion in an international movie. The German film
director, however, is more interested in the father's experiences as
an eyewitness to tragic events during the war years. It's what the
media feeds on.

Several entries in the East of the West competition heralded the
revival of national cinemas in the "CentEast" region.. Stanislaw
Mucha's Hope (Poland/Germany, 2007), for instance, finally completes
the Dante triptych – Heaven, Hell, Purgatory – that was originally
outlined for international coproduction by the late Krzysztof
Kieslowski and his screenwriter Krzysztof Piesiewicz. Following
Kieslowski's death, the screenplays were passed on to other
filmmakers. In Tom Tykwer's Heaven (Germany/USA, 2002), an English
teacher in Turin (Cate Blanchett) unintentionally commits an act of
terror and is rescued from her fate by the son of the former police
superintendent. In Danis Tanovic L'Enfer (Hell)

(France/Italy/Belgium/Japan, 2005), three sisters (Emmanuelle Beart,
Karin Viard, Marie Gillain) relive their traumatic childhood by virtue
of a shared secret. And now in Stanislaw Mucha's Hope an idealistic
young man (Rafal Fudalej) witnesses the theft of a rare painting from
a Warsaw church, whereupon he resorts to blackmail to have the
treasure turned to its rightful place. Hopefully, this film triptych
will surface in the future on the festival circuit – if only to
determine how faithfully the three directors have explored the
modern-day implications of moral unrest in Dante's classic, The Divine
Comedy.

Awards

International Competition
Crystal Globe – Grand Prix
Myrin (Jar City) (Iceland/Germany), dir Baltasar Kormakur
Special Jury Prize
Lucky Miles (Australia), dir Michael James Rowland
Best Director
Bard Breien, Kunsten a tenke negativt (The Art of Negative Thinking) (Norway)
Best Actress
Elvira Mínguez, Pudor (Spain), dir Tristran Ulloa, David Ulloa
Best Actor
Sergei Puskepalis, Prostyje veshchi (Simple Things) (Russia), dir
Alexei Popogrebsky
Special Mention – ex aequo
Leonid Bronevoi, Prostyje veshchi (Simple Things) (Russia), dir Alexei
Popogrebsky
Zdenek Sverak, for script Vratne lahve (Empties) (Czech Republic), dir
Jan Sverak

Documentary Competition
Best Long Documentary (over 30 minutes)
Ztracena dovolena (Lost Holiday) (Czech Republic), dir Lucie Kralova
Special Mention
Problemat s komarite i drugi istorii (The Mosquito Problem and Other
Stories) (Bulgaria), dir Andrei Paounov
Best Short Documentary (under 30 minutes)
Artel (Russia), dir Sergei Loznitsa
Special Mention
Teodors (Theodore) (Latvia), dir Laila Pakalnina

East of the West Competition
Best Film
Armin (Croatia/Germany/Bosnia&Herzegovina), dir Ognjen Svilcic
Special Mention
Klass (The Class) (Estonia), dir Ilmar Raag

Non-Statutory Awards
International Critics (FIPRESCI) Prize
Prostyje veshchi (Simple Things) (Russia), dir Alexei Popogrebsky
Ecumenical Prize
Prostyje veshchi (Simple Things) (Russia), dir Alexei Popogrebsky
Special Mention
Dialogue avec mon jardiner (Conversation with My Gardiner) (France),
dir Jean Becker
Don Quixote Prize (FICC – International Federation of Film Clubs)
Myrin (Jar City) (Iceland/Germany), dir Baltasar Kormakur
Netpac Jury – Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema
Bikur hatizmoret (The Band's Visit) (Israel/France), dir Eran Kolirin
Czech Television Award – Independent Camera Prize – Forum of Independents
Pingpong (Germany), dir Matthias Luthardt
Europa Cinemas Label Award – Main Competition and East of the West
Klass (The Class) (Estonia), dir Ilmar Raag
Pravo Audience Award
Vratne lahve (Empties) (Czech Republic), dir Jan Sverak
Awards for Outstanding Artistic Contribution to World Cinema
Bretislav Pojar, Czech Republic
Danny DeVito, USA