59th Karlovy Vary Film Festival Announces Official Selection and Juries ...Middle East

One of the oldest film festivals in the world, and the most prestigious such festival in Eastern and Central Europe, the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (KVIFF) has announced the official selection for its upcoming 59th edition, to be held July 4-12 in the Czech Republic. 

34 titles have been announced within this year’s official selection, encompassing not only the 12 world/international premieres that will compete for the Crystal Globe—Karlovy Vary’s main prize—but also films in the parallel Proxima competition for emerging and established auteurs whose works push the boundaries of contemporary cinema, plus a set of special screenings. 

Karel Och, artistic director of Karlovy Vary, said in an official statement released Tuesday that this year’s official selection “offers an exciting display of the diversity of contemporary arthouse cinema,” bringing together filmmakers from countries including Bangladesh, Lithuania, Norway, and Colombia. 

“Answering exclusively to their artistic integrity, the filmmakers who have accepted the invitation to premiere their brand new works in Karlovy Vary fearlessly protect the right to challenge expectations, to disrupt stereotypes and to win over hearts and minds with equal intensity,” he added. 

Buzzy Lineup, Including Feature Debuts, Set for Crystal Globe, Proxima Competitions

Among the films competing for the Crystal Globe this year will be Gözde Kural’s “Cinema Jazireh,” about a woman who changes identities to search for her son in Afghanistan under Taliban rule; Pere Vilà Barceló’s “When a River Becomes the Sea,” in which an archaeology student slowly reckons with a traumatic event; Bence Fliegauf’s “Jimmy Jaguar,” about a vengeful demon who drifts from soul to soul across the plains of Hungary; and Miro Remo’s “Better Go Mad in the Wild,” a documentary about three generations of modern-day hermits. 

Max Walker-Silverman’s “Rebuilding,” which premiered earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival, will also compete in the section; Josh O’Connor stars as a cowboy reconnecting with his daughter and ex-wife after a wildfire consumes his family ranch. Two feature debuts—Nina Knag’s “Don’t Call Me Mama” and Vytautas Katkus’ “The Visitor”—are among those competing for the Crystal Globe, as is João Rosas’ “The Luminous Life,” the documentary filmmaker’s fiction feature debut. 

In the 13-strong Proxima section, seven of which are feature debuts, selections include Daniel Vidal Toche’s “The Anatomy of Horses,” a meditation on oppression and exploitation in Peru; Mahde Hasan’s “Sand City,” in which two sand thieves in Dhaka discover a severed finger; Federico Atehortúa Arteaga’s “Forensics,” an experimental essay related to Colombia’s Search Unit for Missing Persons; and Steffen Goldkamp’s “Rain Fell On the Nothing New,” about a young man’s efforts to start over once serving a stint in juvenile detention.   

The festival will additionally host special screenings of films including Paul Andrew Williams’ “Dragonfly,” starring Andrea Riseborough and Brenda Blethyn as neighbors who strike up an unlikely friendship; Zuzana Kirchnerová’s “Caravan,” which premiered at Cannes; Cherien Dabis’ “All That’s Left of You,” following one Palestinian family through seven decades of oppression and displacement; and Dužan Duong’s “Summer School, 2001,” depicting the Vietnamese diaspora in the Czech Republic. 

Additional titles will be announced on June 9, with between 120 and 130 feature films planned to screen in total at the festival. (Of note: 11 of the 12 films competing for the Crystal Globe have been announced, but one remaining title from Iran will be announced closer to the festival, out of concern for the safety of those involved with its production.)

The members of the Crystal Globe jury are Mexican producer Nicolás Celis (“Roma”), filmmaker Babak Jalali (“Fremont”), film critic and programmer Jessica Kiang, Czech filmmaker Jiří Mádl (“Waves”), and Swedish actress and director Tuva Novotny (“Blind Spot”). 

The films in the Proxima Competition will be judged by Indonesian producer Yulia Evina Bhara (“Tiger Stripes,” “Renoir”), Mexico-based Romanian filmmaker Noaz Deshe (“White Shadow,” “Xoftex”), Dominican filmmaker Nelson Carlos De Los Santos Arias (“Pepe”), Czech filmmaker and dramaturg Jakub Felcman (“A Night Too Young”), and CAA media-finance agent Marissa Frobes, who supported packaging or sales of projects including “The Brutalist” and “Rebuilding.”

American Actor John Garfield, Czech Editor Jiří Brožek to Receive Special Tributes

Outside of its competition titles and special screenings, Karlovy Vary often stages tributes to various screen luminaries and representatives of the global film industry, along with extensive retrospectives that illuminate classic films in a modern context.

Looking stateside, this year’s KVIFF will pay tribute to American screen star John Garfield, one of the first actors to pioneer the acting technique later known as method acting and a noted influence on later actors like Montgomery Clift, James Dean, Paul Newman, Alain Delon, and Marlon Brando, all of whom emphasized similar styles of intense realism and emotional depth. 

A brooding and rebellious screen presence, Garfield grew up in poverty in New York City before playing tough and sensitive parts on stage for the Group and American Laboratory Theatre, both influential collectives of the 1930s. Signed to a seven-year film contract by Jack Warner of Warner Bros., he was a Hollywood sensation out of the gate, earning an Oscar nomination for his debut performance in Michael Curtiz’s “Four Daughters.” He earned another nearly a decade later, for “Body and Soul,” and won recognition as well for steely, vulnerable character work in films like “They Made Me A Criminal,” “The Postman Always Rings Twice,” “Force of Evil,” and “The Breaking Point.” 

In tribute to Garfield, KVIFF will screen the following films: “Four Daughters,” “They Made Me a Criminal,” “Dust Be My Destiny,” “Pride of the Marines,” “The Postman Always Rings Twice,” “Humoresque,” “Body and Soul,” “Force of Evil,” “The Breaking Point,” and “He Ran All the Way.”

“We are excited to remember the exceptional but somewhat forgotten career of a pioneer

of what, in his day, was an unusually realistic approach to acting by showing 10 titles,” Och states. “No fewer than eight of them will be screened from the 35mm prints.” 

As previously announced, this year’s KVIFF President’s Award for Outstanding Contribution to Czech Cinema will be presented during the festival’s closing ceremony to film editor Jiří Brožek, recognizing the nine-time Czech Lion Award winner for a career that spans more than 50 years and over 100 productions. 

After graduating from the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (or FAMU) in 1973, Brožek joined Barrandov Studios, where he would work for the next 20 years; he first gained experience as an assistant editor under Jiřina Lukešová, who recommended him to directors Jiří Menzel and Jaroslav Papoušek. 

Among the most influential editors in all of Czech cinema, Brožek has since collaborated with leading Czech filmmakers like Menzel (“Cutting It Short,” “The Snowdrop Festival,” “The End of Old Times,” “I Served the King of England,” “My Sweet Little Village”), Věra Chytilová (“Story from a Housing Estate,” “Calamity,” “The Jester and the Queen”), and Karel Kachyňa (“Love Between the Raindrops,” “Nurses,” “The Train of Childhood and Expectation,” “Golden Eels,” “Watch Out, the Doctor Is on His Round!”). In tribute to Brožek, the festival will present “The Death of the Beautiful Deer,” one of his many films with Kachyňa. 

Brožek’s first independent editing credit came with Papoušek’s “Finally We Understand Each Other,” in 1975. Coincidentally, this year’s KVIFF will also present the premiere of a digitally restored re-release of “Ecce Homo Homolka,” Papoušek’s 1969 comedy, which has been called the final film of the Czechoslovak New Wave of the 1960s. 

Made after close collaborators Miloš Forman (“The Firemen’s Ball”) and Ivan Passer (“Intimate Lighting”) had been driven into exile by the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, Papoušek’s film—a sarcastic look at Czech family dynamics—continued the trio’s approach of working with non-professional actors to craft comedic, sensitively observed films about everyday Czech people with an aesthetic of documentary realism. 

In the coming weeks, Karlovy Vary will announce additional titles for this year’s lineup, along with this year’s recipients of the honorary Festival President’s Award, last year bestowed on actors Viggo Mortensen, Daniel Brühl, and Clive Owen. 

Full film descriptions for KVIFF’s competition titles and special screenings are below, supplied by the festival. You can find out more about the festival’s program sections here.

CRYSTAL GLOBE COMPETITION

“Cinema Jazireh”

Director: Gözde Kural

Turkey, Iran, Bulgaria, Romania, 2025, 124 min, World premiere 

Afghanistan under the brutal rule of the Taliban. After surviving her family’s massacre, Leila has just one goal in life: to find her son Omid. But in a country where being a woman means being less than nothing, her chances are desperately slim, and so she chooses an extreme and dangerous solution. She radically changes her identity and sets out on a path where even the slightest hesitation can mean death. In her masterfully crafted second film, Turkish director Gözde Kural applies her familiarity with Afghan society in order to tell a story of oppression that forces individuals into roles – be it borrowed masculinity or forced femininity – that they would never accept in a free country.

“Divia” 

Director: Dmytro Hreshko

Poland, Ukraine, Netherlands, USA, 2025, 79 min, World premiere 

War is primarily a human tragedy, but we should not forget that nature typically suffers with us. The documentary film Divia is a darkly immersive meditation which brings to light Russia’s unprecedented aggression on Ukrainian soil and its grievous impact on places that issue their indictments in silence: forests turned to ash, fields ravaged by explosions, flooded towns, or rusted hulks of military hardware in devastated regions, where life has faded away. But nature doesn’t just give up and, like her, neither does man and his ambiguous existence. As one side brings destruction, the other – mine clearance personnel, people searching for bodies, ecologists – quantifies the aftermath of the tragedy and restores fragile Ukrainian ecosystems, even while the horizon rumbles on.

“Les Enfants vont bien” (“Out of Love”) 

Director: Nathan Ambrosioni

France, 2025, 111 min, World premiere 

After many years, Suzanne and her two children unexpectedly show up at the home of her sister Jeanne. It initially looks like Suzanne is tentatively attempting to re-establish a relationship with her sister. But this illusion is shattered with the morning light: Suzanne is gone… Nathan Ambrosioni’s intimate film is a portrait of a woman forced to become a mother to children she barely knows. His minimalist, yet profoundly empathetic storytelling lets the audience observe the slow process of coming together, the fears and hesitations of the newborn family, and the absurdities of the non-functioning state apparatus. A French reflection on the fragile nature of co-existence born of necessity, and how strong it can be when born out of love.

“Jimmy Jaguar” 

Director: Bence Fliegauf

Hungary, 2025, 112 min, World premiere 

Jimmy Jaguar, aka Jagu, is a demon who drifts from soul to soul, awakening something dark within. His hosts become vessels of revenge. But whose revenge? And why do their victims, chosen with no clear pattern, all seem to share the same eerie trait? They are alive only because “it is against the law to kill them”. Bence Fliegauf’s latest film – following his acclaimed works from Berlin and Locarno – unfolds across the vast, unforgiving plains of Hungary, where silence hangs heavy and secrets sleep beneath the soil. Listen closely, and you might hear the silence rumble with threat… or catch echoes of a buried past. Or perhaps it’s the demon calling – because Jagu needs us all.

“Quan un riu esdevé el mar” (“When a River Becomes the Sea”) 

Director: Pere Vilà Barceló

Spain, 2025, 180 min, World premiere 

After a period of thirteen years Pere Vilà Barceló returns to the Crystal Globe Competition with an uncompromising, introspective probe into the soul of a girl who is sexually abused. The heroine of his sixth film is Gaia, a young archaeology student, whose relationship with herself, and with those around her, is forever marked by a traumatic event. Initially, Gaia cannot find the words to describe her situation, let alone the courage to speak about it. Eventually, however – like an archaeological excavation – she begins to uncover fragments of the past in order to piece her life together. The Catalan filmmaker was able to provide a realistic depiction of her situation by choosing to emphasise the actual process of coping with the trauma, a process which can’t be rushed.  

“Raději zešílet v divočině” (“Better Go Mad in the Wild”) 

Director: Miro Remo

Czech Republic, Slovak Republic, 2025, 77 min, World premiere 

The uniqueness of filmmaker Miro Remo resides, among others, in the originality of the questions his films raise. His latest outing, a work which loosely develops the theme explored in the book of the same name by Aleš Palán and Jan Šibík, provocatively asks whether it’s possible to spend your whole life in a single place. As if harking back to a bygone era, twins František and Ondřej Klišík have made the stubborn decision to do just that. Crazy eccentrics or charismatic, possessed storytellers? It seems that they never grew up; viewed through the lens of so-called civilisation, their world shows signs of absurdity. Yet, in their genuine bucolic enchantment, they offer us all the chance to distill our source of inspiration, those of us who sometimes tire of conformist adherence to order.

“Rebuilding”

Director: Max Walker-Silverman

USA, 2025, 95 min, International premiere 

Three years after the lyrical romance “A Love Song,” Max Walker-Silverman demonstrates his genuine kindheartedness as he invites us back to his native Colorado. He acquaints us with the reticent Dusty (Josh O’Connor), whose ranch has burned down in a devastating wildfire. Where will he find the strength to start again? Does the answer lie within the community of people impacted by these same destructive fires? Who knows, maybe he’ll be given the opportunity to try to form a stronger relationship with his daughter, who lives nearby with her mother. This tale of the power of community spirit in difficult times, interwoven with a fine strand of melancholy, is as disarming and subtly engaging as the director’s unshakeable faith in human decency.

“Sbormistr” (“Broken Voices”) 

Director: Ondřej Provazník

Czech Republic, Slovak Republic, 2025, 104 min, World premiere 

It’s the early 1990s and 13-year-old Karolína, a gifted novice singer, is given the chance to become a member of a world-famous girls’ choir, taking her place alongside her older sister and her other rivals in the ensemble. Everything points to the fact that Karolína’s exceptional talent has caught the attention of the formidable and much admired choirmaster. This highly anticipated psychological drama calls to mind not only the notorious case of Bambini di Praga, but also other devastating situations involving the clash of innocence and abusive authority. In a work entirely free of sensationalism, Provazník demonstrates focused humility and extraordinary sensitivity towards his fledgling actors as he depicts an exclusive world, in which desirable prestige goes hand in hand with premature coming of age.

“Se meg” (“Don’t Call Me Mama”) 

Director: Nina Knag

Norway, 2025, 108 min, World premiere 

Eva is a popular teacher who is married to the local mayor. Although he has betrayed her trust by cheating on her, she still plans to support his election campaign, and so she starts to volunteer at a local refugee center. Here, she grows close to eighteen-year-old refugee Amir, who charms her with his poetic talents. But the closer they get, the less control she has over the situation. A drama about forbidden love, “Don’t Call Me Mama” confronts its protagonists with a moral test while provocatively exploring how hypocrisy can masquerade as generosity. Taking full advantage of her experience as a casting director, Nina Knag gets outstanding performances from actors Pia Tjelta, Kristoffer Joner, and Tarek Zayat.

“Svečias” (“The Visitor”) 

Director: Vytautas Katkus

Lithuania, Norway, Sweden, 2025, 111 min, World premiere 

It’s the end of summer. Danielius, a new father in his mid-thirties, leaves his family in Norway and travels to his native Lithuania to sell his parents’ flat. He tries to reconnect with old friends, but the strong bond he once had with them is now broken. Instead of rushing back to his young family to escape the deafening loneliness, he decides to stay, allowing himself to be guided by his solitude. In his feature debut, director and cameraman Vytautas Katkus indirectly builds on his own short filmmaking endeavours, in which he works deftly with an authentic space familiar both to himself and his protagonists, while at the same time adopting a loose conception of time. Here, time seems to have stopped completely in a world which lights up the fragility of the human soul and images of a home that is no longer ours.

“A Vida Luminosa” (“The Luminous Life”) 

Director: João Rosas

Portugal, France, 2025, 99 min, International premiere 

Spring is in the air, and Nicolau has just turned twenty-four years old, but he doesn’t feel like throwing a big party. He is beginning to sense that his dream of being a professional musician is falling apart, he still lives with his parents, and he pines for his former girlfriend. Though he lacks the energy to move forward, fate throws several opportunities his way to take control of his life again. With his debut feature – a sun-drenched Lisbon tale about the carefree naiveté of youth that brings to mind the films of Rohmer – João Rosas follows on not just his shorts “Entrecampos” (2012), “Maria do Mar” (2015), and “Catavento” (2020), in which he depicted Nicolau’s childhood and adolescence, but also the legacy of earlier Portuguese auteur filmmakers.

PROXIMA COMPETITION

“La anatomía de los caballos” (“The Anatomy of the Horses”)

Director: Daniel Vidal Toche

Spain, Peru, Colombia, France, 2025, 106 min, World premiere 

Defeated in combat, Ángel returns home to his village in a remote part of the Peruvian Andes. When he arrives, however, he finds the place has completely changed. What was the 18th century is now the present day. What has become of the ideals of the revolution he fought for? The people who live in Peru today, what are they fighting for? “The Anatomy of the Horses” takes the viewer on a visually and intellectually stimulating journey through the space-time continuum, during which director Daniel Vidal Toche reflects upon whether the struggle against oppression and exploitation in Peru will ever come to an end. Through the character of Ángel, and also Eustaquia, a girl searching for her sister, he also questions whether revolutionary thinking should be consigned to the past.

“Avant / Après” (“Before / After”) 

Director: Manoël Dupont

Belgium, 2025, 80 min, World premiere 

Jérémy and Baptiste encounter one another quite by chance, yet they quickly realise they have something in common: the desire to feel good about themselves once again and to find a solution to their receding hairlines in order to achieve this goal. Their shared journey to Istanbul to receive hair transplants develops into a surprisingly intimate experience during which, alongside new heads of hair, a fragile bond starts to grow as well. In his feature debut Manoël Dupont follows the two men with a sense of empathetic detachment and an appreciation for fine detail and humorous dialogue. The film likewise gently explores the themes of queer identity, vulnerability and human intimacy. The pair’s meanders through the Turkish metropolis heighten the atmosphere of the quest – namely the search for beauty in things that aren’t perfect.

“Ayspes asatc qamin” (“Thus Spoke the Wind”) 

Director: Maria Rigel

Armenia, 2025, 92 min, World premiere 

Hayk, an introverted child, lives with his aunt Narine in a remote Armenian village. While Narine cares for him as if he were her own son, Hayk is finding it difficult to fit in with the local teenagers, who amuse themselves trying to toughen him up. When his young mother Anahit returns home after a lengthy period abroad, she upsets the patriarchal order in the village with her striking appearance and rebellious nature, ultimately inciting a conflict for which no-one is prepared. This cryptic, visually and aurally mesmerising film, viewed through the eyes of a child forced to grow up too soon, is dominated by the all-pervading motif of the wind. Its rustling stirs the tension in a radicalising conservative society, while its wailing heralds the irreversible consequences of raging human emotion.

“Balur Nogorite” (“Sand City”)

Director: Mahde Hasan

Bangladesh, 2024, 99 min, World premiere 

Emma and Hasan don’t know each other, but they have much in common. Most importantly, they are both sand thieves. Emma steals it for kitty litter, Hasan for making homemade glass. One day, their lives are disrupted by the discovery of a severed finger, and they learn that the human psyche can shatter as easily as glass… William Blake saw the entire world in a grain of sand, infinity in the palm of the hand, and eternity in an hour. In his debut film, Bangladeshi director Mahde Hasan plucks Blake’s words from the page and blows them across Dhaka until they stick to his protagonists. It is an oppressive portrait of a city full of sand, blended with a stylistically refined elegy about the flow of time, personal privacy, destruction, and the tear-filled valleys of our inner worlds.

“Forenses” (“Forensics”) 

Director: Federico Atehortúa Arteaga

Colombia, 2024, 91 min, International premiere 

The signing of the peace accord between the Colombian government and the FARC guerrillas in 2016 led to the formation of the Search Unit for Missing Persons. The act of finding and identifying the missing was thus seen as essential for rebuilding a nation, whose identity is shaped by those who disappeared. This experimental essay interweaves three stories: a female director reconstructing the life of a dead transgender woman through film; an intimate study of the filmmaker’s family, who also dealt with a missing relative; and the testimony of forensic pathologist Karen Quintero. This formally unremitting work finds a compelling balance between the personal and the political, adding conceptual reflections on the texture of the region, on cartography, and the unspoken traumas of Colombia’s modern history.

“Futuro Futuro” (“Future Future”)  

Director: Davi Pretto

Brazil, 2025, 86 min, World premiere 

In his fourth feature film Davi Pretto takes the viewer into the near future, where the development of artificial intelligence has brought with it increasing neurological problems. And this is what’s troubling 40-year-old protagonist K, who has lost his memory and can’t remember where he is from. The desolate man has to find out where he really belongs, and his journey through an unidentified city proves absurd, almost tragic. In the context of the ruling caste system, this low-budget dystopia articulates class inequality in contemporary Brazil, moreover, it touches on environmental issues and uses AI to create scenes in the film. The result is formally stimulating, engaging, and, at the very least, cautionary.

“Kako je ovde tako zeleno?” (“How Come It’s All Green Out Here?”) 

Director: Nikola Ležaić

Serbia, Croatia, Bulgaria, 2025, 114 min, World premiere 

Nikola, 34, is a commercial director, he’s about to become a father for the first time, and he dreams of one day taking his young family on a road trip in an old van he wants to convert into a camper. Over the course of one weekend, however, accompanying his father and extended family to a small village in Dalmatia, where his grandmother’s remains are to be buried, he finds himself looking to the past instead of the future. Ostensibly, nothing remarkable happens during the course of the journey. Yet Nikola Ležaić’s second, quasi-autobiographical work uses subtlety to explore family relationships marred by the passing of time and by communication breakdown. In its own way, the film is also a contemplation of recollections, memory and post-Yugoslav reality.

“Na druhé straně léta” (“The Other Side of Summer”) 

Director: Vojtěch Strakatý

Czech Republic, Croatia, 2025, 85 min, World premiere 

In the middle of the lake lies an island – silent, abandoned, without the clear promise of anything unusual. Bětka, her older sister Marie, and their friend Alma are spending the summer here, the days flowing like still water. When they randomly visit the island, the natural landscape around them begins to change – and the emotional one inside them as well… Vojtěch Strakatý’s second feature film is a gentle study of girlhood, the yearning for a different world, and the fragile search for happiness, which may lie elsewhere – or not exist at all. In a poetic Bohemian summer where the buzzing of insects mixes with the sound of the rustling grass, we observe the girls’ friendship as something mysterious and half-dreamed. The only thing we know for sure is that the other side of summer is when summer ends.

“Neplatené voľno” (“Action Item”) 

Director: Paula Ďurinová

Slovak Republic, Czech Republic, Germany, 2025, 69 min, World premiere 

A year after the premiere of her documentary debut “Lapilli,” Paula Ďurinová returns with an entirely different, yet equally sensitive film entitled Action Item. This activist anatomy of burnout, set in Berlin, interweaves the observation of community sharing with a more experimental montage. The work takes note of the myths associated with individualistic society yet, at the same time, it conveys sincere moments of solidarity between individuals who aren’t afraid to speak of their anxieties. This is both a personal and also very human film, which invites us to take a break in these hectic times, when burnout doesn’t necessarily mean the end; on the contrary, it might be a new beginning, where individual pain is gradually transformed into the power of collective sharing.

“Regen fiel auf nichts Neues” (“Rain Fell On the Nothing New”) 

Director: Steffen Goldkamp

Germany, 2025, 85 min, World premiere 

David has served his time in juvenile detention. His sincere attempts to restart his life as a free individual with better prospects, however, are hindered by a society that can’t overlook the fact that he has a criminal record, nor is it particularly willing to give him a second chance. Will David be able to cope with his increasing feelings of frustration, or will he succumb once more to the lure of crime? Steffen Goldkamp’s feature debut relies on surgically precise direction, carefully constructed atmosphere, and also the discreet empathy with which the filmmaker discovers the intimacy of his antihero hovering on the edge of society. With his softly nuanced performance Noah Sayenko excels in the main role.

“Renovacija” (“Renovation”) 

Director: Gabrielė Urbonaitė

Lithuania, Latvia, Belgium, 2025, 90 min, World premiere 

29-year-old Ilona and her boyfriend have just moved into a new apartment in a block of flats. When the building’s renovation begins soon afterwards and she befriends Oleg, one of the Ukrainian construction workers, her idyllic notions of a fulfilling life as she approaches thirty start to crumble, like the old plaster on the walls. Gabrielė Urbonaitė’s feature debut is a masterful, contemporary portrayal of the lives of millennials, who on the one hand are exposed to modernity, endless possibilities and Western Europe’s constant pressure to perform, while on the other they still carry the traumas of previous generations brought up in the Soviet Union, whose shadows are still alive in the face of current political events.

“TrepaNation” 

Director: Ammar al-Beik

Syria, Germany, France, 2025, 222 min, World premiere 

Germany, September 2014. A Syrian refugee camp has opened on the outskirts of Berlin. Visual artist and filmmaker Ammar al-Beik has a cubicle assigned to him for seven months and, in order to survive here, he has to film, document, and rebel against the conditions of life in exile, and also against the established rules of documentaries and features. His phone camera is always switched on; he transforms his tiny room and the entire dismal compound into a universe with its own laws. Ammar’s explosive film is the result of ten years of editing; the intensive autobiography intersects the history of Europe and the Middle East, and film history, too. The singular cinematographic form is flanked with memorable individuals who, like exiled Ammar al-Beik, are merely searching for freedom and truth.

“Vgainoun mesa ap ti Margo” (“They Come Out of Margo”) 

Director: Alexandros Voulgaris

Greece, 2025, 91 min, World premiere 

A tender horror flick, an experimental melodrama. Any attempt made to categorise this unconventional cinematic experience seems inadequate. Greek director and musician Alexandros Voulgaris, a.k.a. The Boy, brings us an unusually intimate, yet expressively powerful study of an artist on the brink of middle age. All fears, anxieties and hopes are embodied in the character of Margo, a songwriter who was once famous but who now isolates herself in her apartment. A party held to celebrate her 40th birthday and the emotions that are born there unexpectedly help Margo enter a new stage in her life.

SPECIAL SCREENINGS

“Dragonfly”  

Director: Paul Andrew Williams

United Kingdom, 2025, 98 min, European premiere 

Fragile eighty-year-old Elsie and the vibrant Colleen are separated not just by half a century, but also by the shared wall of their semi-detached house in a small English town. One day, the two women – otherwise accustomed to living in solitude – begin to notice each other’s existence, and an uncommon friendship is born. But although their bond provides mutual comfort, it alarms their previously indifferent surroundings. “I wanted to tell a story about the marginalised and forgotten people in society,” says director Paul Andrew Williams. “I wanted to create an atmospheric and uncertain world and constantly ask the audience to challenge their preconceptions of others.” Come and see two great British actors – Brenda Blethyn and Andrea Riseborough – as you have never seen them before!

“Duchoň” 

Director: Peter Bebjak

Slovak Republic, Czech Republic, 2025, 99 min, World premiere 

Czardas of Two Hearts, In the Slovak Valleys and I Love You are just some of the hits which turned pop singer Karol Duchoň into a household name more than four decades ago. At a time when the young generation is rediscovering the legacy of the “Czechoslovak Tom Jones” outside the context of his heyday, Peter Bebjak (The Line, Nineties) presents a stirring portrait proving that the concepts auteur cinema and big audience can coexist in a single, highly appealing endeavour. The film version of Duchoň’s dramatic fate relies on the stage play by Jiří Havelka and Róbert Mankovecký “The Earth Remembers (Zem pamätá),” and preserves the way in which it looks back at the Normalisation era, without rash judgement, yet with subtle irony.

“Hore je nebo, v doline som ja” (“Promise, I’ll Be Fine”) 

Director: Katarína Gramatová

Slovak Republic, Czech Republic, 2024, 93 min, European premiere 

15-year-old Enrique, or Eňo to his friends, is spending the summer with his gran. His time with her is interspersed with rather infrequent visits from his mother Martina, who works far away; all the same, the boy hopes she’ll take him back with her soon. However, contact with his mother dwindles, and her presence is gradually replaced by unflattering village gossip. Enrique decides to investigate the truth. Like her previous short film “A Good Mind Grows in Thorny Places” (2024), director Katarína Gramatová’s feature debut is also set in the desolate village of Utekáč, where the flaking walls of the houses bring to light the often sombre reality of present-day Slovakia. The leads are played superbly by non-actors, real inhabitants of the Slovak valley, from where it seems an endless distance to the sky above.

“Illi baqi minnak” (“All That’s Left of You”) 

Director: Cherien Dabis

Germany, Cyprus, Palestine, Jordan, Greece, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, 2025, 145 min, European premiere 

The West Bank, 1988. A Palestinian teenager eagerly joins local protests against Israeli soldiers. Suddenly the scene freezes and, with fervour and anguish written on her face, his mother turns to us – witnesses to the dark chapters of the past century – to start telling the story: seven decades in the life of one uprooted family, beginning in 1948, when Zionist paramilitary organizations expelled more than 700,000 Palestinian Arabs from their homes. But this epic chronicle about a family’s struggle to remain together and preserve its dignity in the face of more powerful forces neither judges nor lays blame. In sharing the Palestinian experience with wisdom and in an unusually captivating manner, it touches the heart all the more intensely.

“Karavan” (“Caravan”) 

Director: Zuzana Kirchnerová

Czech Republic, Slovak Republic, Italy, 2025, 102 min 

Ester, 45, has devoted her life to caring for her son David, who has an intellectual disability. A trip to Italy to stay with friends brings an opportunity to escape her soul-destroying routine, yet not even a change of scene can alter the fact that life with David isn’t easy. Ester impulsively fires up the old caravan that was intended as their holiday home and it becomes a means to find freedom. The journey through sun-drenched Italy proves therapeutic for both of them. Perhaps only briefly, deep inside, Ester will rediscover someone who has a right not only to give love, but also to receive it. This personal road movie, which saw Czech feature film return to Cannes after an absence of more than thirty years, shows fondness and unsparing openness as it explores themes of body and soul, freedom and resignation, and hope and powerlessness.

“Letní škola, 2001” (“Summer School, 2001”) 

Director: Dužan Duong

Czech Republic, Slovak Republic, 2025, 102 min, World premiere 

The long-awaited, first Czech Viet-feature is finally here! This authentic portrayal of a community that has become an organic part of modern Czech history is brought to us courtesy of Dužan Duong, a standout, exceptionally talented representative of the first Vietnamese generation to grow up in the Czech Republic. The third millennium has hardly begun and 17-year-old Kien with his crazy red hair returns to his family and their market stall in Cheb after ten years spent in Vietnam. However, instead of the warm welcome he had anticipated, he finds an estranged father, a careworn mother and a younger brother who doesn’t cut him any slack. Told with lightness and wit, this story about cross-generational conflict and much else besides is an affectionate and bold milestone in the debate on cultural identity.

“Projekt český film” (“The Czech Film Project”) 

Director: Marek Novák, Mikuláš Novotný

Czech Republic, 2025, 83 min, World premiere 

At the 1982 Cannes Film Festival, Wim Wenders invited several of his esteemed colleagues to a hotel room, where he filmed their reflections on the future of film. This exclusive documentary survey, “Room 666,” inspired two Czech producers to engage in a similar undertaking in collaboration with the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. During last year’s festival, they thus invited around thirty Czech or Czech-based filmmakers from all generations and asked them “what makes Czech film Czech?” The result is an exciting mosaic not just of views and opinions, but also of mannerisms and personalities.

“A Second Life” 

Director: Laurent Slama

France, 2024, 74 min, European premiere 

As Paris pulsates with excitement on the opening day of the Olympic Games, Elisabeth moves around the city with an equal air of anticipation. She works for an Airbnb broker, and the sheer number of arrivals makes this a critical day for her. Elisabeth is tired not just of constantly running between clients, but also from the pressures she faces from her employer. A surprising sense of calm comes when she meets a man named Elijah. A Second Life is an ode to friendship, an urban fairy tale, and an almost documentary portrait of a city in the grips of a massive sporting event. The fragile authenticity of the main protagonists’ experiences is further amplified by an intense soundtrack that practically lets us touch the world of Elisabeth, who must deal not only with work-related difficulties but also with her hearing impairment.

“Tehran, Kenarat” (“Tehran Another View”) 

Director: Ali Behrad

Iran, United Kingdom, 2025, 92 min, European premiere 

The moment they greet each other at their friends’ wedding, we know that Leili and Pasha were once a couple. But something split them apart. We see their story in flashback. The start of their romance was literally explosive, and it looked as if Pasha wouldn’t survive. But their mutual attraction would not be deterred by his burns and his slight concussion, and the couple slowly moved from an initial infatuation to a more serious phase in their relationship, when it was time to make more difficult decisions than where to go for dinner. And thus came the moment of separation… A charming mix of genres, Iranian director Ali Behrad’s second feature film is a vibrant portrait of Tehran and its inhabitants, who lose none of their élan even in the face of a difficult political situation.

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