Back to the future at 60th Karlovy Vary

One of the Crystal Globe Competition contenders: Iranian Nader Saeivar’s Hijamat Photo: Film Servis Karlovy Vary

As the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival limbers up for this year’s edition, the emphasis is on celebration of not just one but two anniversaries. This year marks 80 years since the first festival took place and it is also the event’s 60th edition.

Maggie Gyllenhaal, who will present her film The Bride which she wrote, directed and produced, and receive the President’s Ward on the festival’s opening night on 3 July. Photo: Film Servis Karlovy Vary

Founded in 1946 the event in the Bohemian spa town two hours south of Prague has had a chequered history, originally spanning two spa towns - Karlovy Vary and Marienbad (Mariánské Lázně). In the years between 1959 and 1993 it alternated with the Moscow International Film Festival before a rebirth in 1994 with the late Jiří Bartoška and Eva Zaoralová at the helm. The festival, which also successfully fought off attempts to move it to Prague, this year will focus on important titles from the festival’s history in the Out of the Past classics section.

Artistic director Karel Och revealed that among the milestone titles will be A Matter Of Life nd Death by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, (screened in 1947) and Ken Loath’s Kes from 1970, which won the top prize for best film.

It is hoped that Loach, now 86, will be present. Guests who so far have confirmed their attendance, include two-time Oscar nominee Maggie Gyllenhaal and actor, screenwriter and director Jesse Eisenberg, also a two-time Academy Award nominee.

Gyllenhaal was born into the film industry, but her upbringing didn’t fit the template of the second-generation Hollywood brat. Born in New York on 16 November 1977, Margalit Ruth Gyllenhaal is the older sister of the actor Jake Gyllenhaal, and the daughter of director Stephen Gyllenhaal (Paris Trout, Family Of Spies) and screenwriter and director Naomi Foner Gyllenhaal (Losing Isaiah, Bee Season, Running On Empty). She only discovered that her first name was Margalit – a nod to her mother’s Jewish heritage – rather than Maggie when she asked for her birth certificate in order to take her husband Peter Sarsgaard’s name. She will present her film The Bride!, which she wrote, directed and produced, and receive the President’s Award on the festival’s opening night on 3 July.

Eisenberg, who partly made his namedplaying Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network, has spent most of his life trying to avoid social network notoriety with a mix of indie hits such as the cultish Zombieland and Noah Baumbach’s The Squid And The Whale, and blockbusters (Justice League). He will be seen onscreen in The Double, directed by Richard Ayoade and also receive a President's Award.

Festival director Karel Och: 'Search for the relationship between the artistic and the political, the intimate and the societal.' Photo: Film Servis Karlovy Vary

The Festival boasts a line-up of more than 40 titles across its various sections comprising Crystal Globe Competition, Proxima and Special Screenings. Of the 12 titles in the main competition several quicken the pulse including Iranian Nader Saeivar’s Hijamat, about 50-year-old Murad, whose life is shaken to the core when he learns that his younger brother is gay. Saeivar received an Oscar nomination earlier this year as a co-writer of Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just An Accident.

Valeria Sarmiento’s Behind The Rain, deals with a woman who returns to her hometown where her memories of childhood sexual abuse are awakened while Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov, whose previous films including The Lesson and The Father, present the premiere of their tragi-comedy Black Money for White Nights about a couple whose holiday to Russia is disrupted by the invasion of Ukraine.

Och has defined the intention behind the selection: ”One of the defining characteristics of the films in this year’s main programme is the directors’ impressive effort to comprehend the diversity and complexity of the world through firsthand confrontation, and through a relentless search for the relationship between the artistic and the political, the intimate and the societal.”

Jesse Eisenberg: On screen in Karlovy Vary in The Double, directed by Richard Ayoade and recipient of a Crystal Golden Globe Award. Photo: Film Servis Karlovy Vary

The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival runs from 3 to 11 July.

Crystal Globe Competition

● 3 Weeks After (Srb-Bgr), Dir: Miroslav Terzić

● Black Money for White Nights (Bgr-Grc), Dir: Kristina Grozeva, Petar Valchanov

● Chica Checa (Cz-Fra-Svk), Dir: Šimon Holý

● Five Years, Four Months (Col-US), Dirs: Esteban Hoyos García, Juan Miguel Gelacio Ramírez

● Behind the Rain (Chile), Dir: Valeria Sarmiento

● The Guest (Dnk), Dir: Mads Mengel

● A Happy Family (Switz), Dir: Jan-Eric Mack

● Hijamat (Ger), Dir: Nader Saeivar

● The Lion At My Back (Cyp-Lux-Grc), Dir: Tonia Mishiali

● Pipes (Lbn), Dir: Karim Kassem

● Only Beautiful Things To Look At (Svk-Cz-Hun), Dir: Ivan Ostrochovský

● Fruit Gathering (Mmr-Fr-Cz), Dir: Aung Phyoe

Valeria Sarmiento’s Behind The Rain, deals with a woman who returns to her hometown where her memories of childhood sexual abuse are awakened Photo: Film Servis Karlovy Vary

Proxima Competition

● 33 Steps (Svk-Cz), Dirs: Anna Domček, Šimon Domček

● Truck Driver (Sp-Arg), Dir: Francisco Marise

● Against Nature (Mex), Dir: Axel Bertha

● A Whole Person Almost (Gr-Bul-Ger-Cyp-Rou), Dir: Efthimis Kosemund-Sanidis

● Homo Sive Natura (It), Dir: Giovanni C. Lorusso

● The Ink-Stained Hand And The Missing Thumb (Ind), Dir: Yashasvi Juyal

● My Friend The Porn Star (Austria), Dir: Rosa Friedrich

● Lover, Not A Fighter (Svk), Dir: Martina Buchelová

● Paris Paris (Bel), Dir: Isabelle Tollenaere

● Rain Catcher (It-UK), Dir: Michele Fiascaris

● Incinerator (Jpn), Dir: Shuntaro Uchida

● Petty Thieves (Cro-Ger-Fr), Dir: Mate Ugrin

Scene from Crystal Globe Competition entry Black Money For White Nights, a tragicomedy about a couple whose holiday to Russia is disrupted by the invasion of Ukraine Photo: Film Servis Karlovy Vary

Special Screenings

● Bára - Diary Of A Rockstar (Cz), Dir: Helena Třeštíková

● A Pint Of Ink (Cz-Svk), Dir: Ester Geislerová

● If Pigeons Turned To Gold (Cz-Svk), Dir: Pepa Lubojacki

● The Friend’s House is Here (Irn-US), Dirs: Maryam Ataei, Hossein Keshavarz

● Learning To Breathe Under Water (UK-Neth-Ire), Dir: Rebekah Fortune

● City Of Fathers (Cz-Svk-Pol), Dir: Zdeněk Tyc

● Everything As It Should Be (Cz), Dir: Bohdan Karásek

● Morten (Est-Lith), Dir: Ivan Pavljutskov

● Robert Richardson: The White Devil (Cz-US), Dir: Jana Hojdová

●, The Story of Documentary Film - 1980s (UK), Dir: Mark Cousins

● To Die To Live (Ukr-Lva-Svk), Dir: Yuliia Hontaruk

● Gregorius, the Chosen One (Cz-Pol-Rom), Dir: Tomasz Mielnik

● A Report for Minerva 2 (Cz), Dirs: Miroslav Krobot, Lubomír Smékal