Iran-set coming-of-age story “Summer With Hope” won the top prize at the 56th Karlovy Vary Intl. Film Festival, winning over the Crystal Globe jury with its story of youthful competitive swimmer Omid as he struggles to train for a risky ocean competition.
The film, directed and written by Iranian-Canadian Sadaf Foroughi, is her sophomore feature, following up on 2017 teen drama “Ava.” The Karlovy Vary prize comes with 25,000.
The closing night gala, which filled the Grand Hall of the storied Hotel Thermal in the western Czech spa town, saw several honorees commenting on the critical issue of artistic freedom and urging solidarity with the people of Ukraine. Benicio Del Toro, honored with the fest president’s prize, praised Karlovy Vary for hosting the Odesa film fest’s work-in-progress event this year, saying, the support would help “ensure another culture won’t be a casualty of war.” He also thanked film audiences,...
The film, directed and written by Iranian-Canadian Sadaf Foroughi, is her sophomore feature, following up on 2017 teen drama “Ava.” The Karlovy Vary prize comes with 25,000.
The closing night gala, which filled the Grand Hall of the storied Hotel Thermal in the western Czech spa town, saw several honorees commenting on the critical issue of artistic freedom and urging solidarity with the people of Ukraine. Benicio Del Toro, honored with the fest president’s prize, praised Karlovy Vary for hosting the Odesa film fest’s work-in-progress event this year, saying, the support would help “ensure another culture won’t be a casualty of war.” He also thanked film audiences,...
- 7/9/2022
- by Will Tizard
- Variety Film + TV
For anyone passingly familiar with the turbulent events of 1968 in modern Czech history — or even the various films about them, from Philip Kaufman’s “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” to more home-grown evocations of the Prague Spring and ensuing Soviet invasion — director Beata Parkanová’s decision to set her second feature “Word” in that very year feels like a dramatic short cut, coloring proceedings from the outset with danger and anxiety that require little establishment or explanation. There’s enough finely sketched interior drama, however, in this study of a middle-class family facing down Communist Party threats, that its somewhat generalized sense of milieu feels like a strategic contrast: a crisp little picture framed in a hazy bigger one, defined by a nervy national mood that is implicitly felt rather than explicitly illustrated.
That elision of historical particularity in favor of a sensually recalled zeitgeist might make “Word” — the standout...
That elision of historical particularity in favor of a sensually recalled zeitgeist might make “Word” — the standout...
- 7/9/2022
- by Guy Lodge
- Variety Film + TV
Czech screenwriter and director Beata Parkanova says she had a rich mine of real-life characters and scenes to draw on in crafting her second feature, the retro drama “The Word,” competing in the Karlovy Vary Intl. Film Festival’s main event, the Crystal Globe race.
The filmmaker behind “Moments,” a drama that competed in Kviff’s East of the West section in 2018, is screening her sophomore feature at Karlovy Vary in what artistic director Karel Och calls a “masterfully told and highly original intimate drama” built around the family of notary Vaclav Vojir, “a small-town moral authority,” and his fiercely loyal wife, Vera.
The story follows its protagonists through a political and societal ordeal in the summer of 1968, with nuanced performances by Martin Finger and Gabriela Mikulková.
Finger’s principled probate notary and his suffer-no-fools wife, played by Mikulkova, were both inspired by Parkanova’s own family, she says.
“I...
The filmmaker behind “Moments,” a drama that competed in Kviff’s East of the West section in 2018, is screening her sophomore feature at Karlovy Vary in what artistic director Karel Och calls a “masterfully told and highly original intimate drama” built around the family of notary Vaclav Vojir, “a small-town moral authority,” and his fiercely loyal wife, Vera.
The story follows its protagonists through a political and societal ordeal in the summer of 1968, with nuanced performances by Martin Finger and Gabriela Mikulková.
Finger’s principled probate notary and his suffer-no-fools wife, played by Mikulkova, were both inspired by Parkanova’s own family, she says.
“I...
- 7/3/2022
- by Will Tizard
- Variety Film + TV
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