Photo: Markéta Kachlíková, Radio Prague International
The 57th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival comes to a close on Saturday night with the traditional glitzy awards ceremony. But what have been the best films in the main Crystal Globe competition? And what has been the overall standard of the festival this year? I spoke to iRozhlas.cz film journalist Kristina Roháčková.
We’ve already seen all the 11 films in the main competition. What for you have been some of the most impressive?
“I have to mention Blaga’s Lessons, a Bulgarian movie about a 70-year-old former teacher. She is the victim of a telephone scam and that leads her into this downward spiral of crime of her own. It’s a really impressive social drama. It’s quite stark – and it really stands on the main actress’s back and shoulders.”
There are two Czech films in the main competition: We Were Never Modern and A Sensitive Person. What was your take on those?
“A Sensitive Person is, I think, the one that’s going to distress the audience the most. It’s going to split the reception, because either you find a way of sort of connecting with the story of this really chaotic road movie – about a father connecting with his two young sons – or maybe you plain old hate it all through, and it’s quite a long film. I don’t think it’s going to be a cinema hit, so the festival is going to be the peak for it, I think.
“And We Will Never Be Modern – the English title says it all, I must say. It’s a thriller with a detective storyline and it’s about a woman of science, a rational person I would say, and a country [1930s Czechoslovakia] that’s supposed to be leaning forward when in essence the thinking is backwards.”
See the rest here.
Author: Ian Willoughby