Ten world premières in prospect for Karlovy Vary

Programme plans unveiled for Competition and East Meets West

by Richard Mowe

Monsoon
Monsoon Photo: Kelly Padgett/Moonspun Films
Among the Competition revealed today the organisers of the 54th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in the Czech Republic will be the world premiere of UK-Cambodian director Hong Khaou’s Monsoon, his follow-up to his 2014 Sundance debut Lilting.

The film stars Henry Golding from Crazy Rich Asians as a man struggling with his return to his native Vietnam for the first time in 30 years and seeking to rediscover his identity.

Other world premières in the 12-feature Competition include German director Jan Ole Gerster’s drama Lara, starring Corinna Harfouch; Slovenia’s Damjan Kozole, the winner of best director at the 2016 KVIFF for Nightlife, returns with Half-Sister; and Felipe Ríos’ The Man From The Future set in Chile. The selection will see the international premiere of To The Stars by Martha Stephens, an elegant black-and-white drama set in 1960s Oklahoma about a sweet, withdrawn farmer’s daughter who challenges her repressive upbringing when she makes friends with the new girl in town.

Another noteworthy entry is from Germany’s Jan-Ole Gerster, who returns to Karlovy Vary with another world premiere, the psychological study Lara, starring Corinna Harfouch, while Chinese director Zhai Yixiang’s eagerly anticipated Mosaic Portrait offers a diaphanously hypnotic story of a 14-year-old girl in a critical moment of her life.

The East of the West strand boasts eight world, three international, and one European premiere, with eight first films. The opening title is Aga’s House, from Kosovo director Lendita Zeqiraj.

In the Documentary section featuring eight world premières, will be Spoon from Latvian filmmaker Laila Pakalnina and Over the Hills from award-winning Czech documentarian Martin Mareček as well as the European première of Todd Douglas Miller’s Apollo 11 consisting primarily of newly discovered archival footage, some of which has never been seen before on screen.

Showing out of Competition and fresh from its Cannes première will be the Czech première of a biographical documentary about legendary Czech filmmaker Milos Forman in Forman vs Forman by Helena Třeštíková and Jakub Hejna.

Click the links below to see the full line-up of each section:

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Towards the end of 2024, we covered DOC NYC, the French Film Festival UK, Tallinn Black Nights, the Leeds International Film Festival, Abertoir, the London Korean Film Festival, the Belfast Film Festival and Halloween Frightfest.



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