In a series of first, Darya Zhuk’s debut feature “Crystal Swan” about a young female DJ in Belarus who hope to emigrate to the U.S, which world premieres at the 2018 Karlovy Vary Film Festival has been selected as Belarus’ submission for the Oscars’ foreign-language film category for the 91st Academy Awards reports Variety. This is the first country to publicly announce their selection for the 91st Academy Awards race, and it is the first time Belarus has entered a film in the Oscars competition for 22 years.
In post-Soviet Belarus, unemployed raver Velya dreams of emigrating to the U.S. After purchasing blank letterhead and forging proof of employment to win a much-coveted visa, her dream appears within reach… Until Velya realizes the American consulate plans to call the fake phone number on her application to confirm her employment. Velya’s only solution is to endure a week in a small factory town to convince the authorities of her supposed job. She locates the cramped Soviet apartment on the other end of the line, overrun by a family preparing for the wedding of their son. The imperious mother refuses to lie for her, but Velya negotiates a solution: she can answer the phone during business hours as if she works at the factory. But Velya’s presence soon upends both the family’s and the town’s order, with potentially disastrous consequences for all.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eav__UGDdQ
Terry Gilliam, Anna Paquin, Stephen Moyer[/caption]
Among the guests coming to the festival, the 53rd Karlovy Vary IFF will welcome Director Terry Gilliam, actor Anna Paquin and director Stephen Moyer, actor Rory Cochrane, Actor Caleb Landry Jones, Romain Gavras and producer John Lesher.
Actor, director, screenwriter, producer and musician Tim Robbins, who won an Oscar for best supporting actor for his performance in Mystic River (2003) and who was nominated for a best director Oscar for Dead Man Walking (1995) will be honored at this year’s 53rd Karlovy Vary International Film Festival with the Crystal Globe for Outstanding Contribution to World Cinema.
Thanks to his family background, Tim Robbins had contact with the world of art from an early age. He began his acting career at theaters in New York, and after completing his education he worked as an actor and director with the experimental theatre ensemble The Actor’s Gang, which under his guidance earned widespread audience acclaim and more than a hundred critics’ awards.
After appearing in several smaller film and television roles, Robbins gained more widespread attention thanks to his part in director Ron Shelton’s sports film Bull Durham (1988). Proof that Robbins was an actor of great promise came with his performance in the drama Jacob ’s Ladder (1990). A decisive moment in his acting career was his collaboration with the outstanding director Robert Altman – Robbins’ appearance in the main role in Altman’s The Player (1992) earned him a Golden Globe and the best actor award at the Cannes Film Festival.
That same year, Robbins showed that he was a multifaceted auteur by filming his directorial debut Bob Roberts (1992) according to his own screenplay. Besides appearing in the title role, he also wrote (in collaboration with his brother David) the music for the film and even sang many of the songs himself.
Soon thereafter, Robbins again joined with Robert Altman to shoot Short Cuts (1993). The ensemble cast won a Special Golden Globe and also took home the Volpi Cup from the Venice Film Festival.
There followed appearances in the Coen brothers’ The Hudsucker Proxy (1994), another outing with Robert Altman (the comedy from the world of fashion Prêt-à-Porter, 1994), and his work with Frank Darabont on The Shawshank Redemption (1994), which was nominated for seven Oscars.
Also around this time, Robbins successfully continued with his work as director and screenwriter. Dead Man Walking (1996) earned him an Oscar nomination for best director, while Susan Sarandon won an Oscar for best actress. His next auteur outing, Cradle Will Rock (1999), which premiered at Cannes, explored the relationship between the individual artist and society during a tumultuous time in the U.S. though this time in another era. As with Dead Man Walking, Robbins produced, and the music was written by his brother David.
After Stephen Frears’s romantic comedy High Fidelity (2000) and Michel Gondry’s bizarre Human Nature (2001) – the latter of which was based on a script by Charlie Kaufman – Robbins appeared in one of his most successful roles in Clint Eastwood’s crime drama Mystic River (2004), for which both Robbins and lead actor Sean Penn won an Oscar and a Golden Globe. Recently Robbins has been seen in 
I Do Not Care If We Go Down In History As Barbarians[/caption]
Ten world and two international premieres will compete at this year’s 53rd Karlovy Vary IFF including the latest by leading Romanian filmmaker Radu Jude “I Do Not Care If We Go Down In History As Barbarians”, an original exploration of the subject of nationality and a nation coming to terms with the traumatic moments of its own past. Respected Argentinian director Ana Katz presents a mixture of subtle melancholy with light humor in her family drama Sueño Florianópolis, and we find a no less complex look at the question of male-female relationships in The Fireflies Are Gone, the story of a rebellious yet charismatic teenager directed by Canadian filmmaker Sébastien Pilote.
A harrowing performance by actor Caleb Landry Jones dominates Peter Brunner’s dark Austro-American drama To the Night. Two other filmmakers previously recognized at KVIFF present equally original though noticeably more poetic new films: the Russian director of the popular Zoology, Ivan Tverdovsky, presents Jumpman, while Israeli director Joseph Madmony is presenting his third premiere at KVIFF, the subtly moving drama Redemption, co-directed by cinematographer Boaz Y. Yakov.
Domestic cinema will be represented by Olmo Omerzu’s road movie about the force of boyhood friendship Winter Flies and by debut filmmaker Adam Sedlák’s claustrophobic minimalist study of the slow decline of body and mind, Domestique. Other debuts are from the Dominican Republic and Spain (Natalia Cabral and Oriol Estrada’s nuanced story of an adolescent girl, Miriam Lies), Poland (Paweł Maślona’s dark comedy Panic Attack) and Turkey (Ömür Atay’s moving drama Brothers). The selection, which spans a wide range of styles and genres, is rounded out by talented Slovenian director Sonja Prosenc’s poetic tale of female coming-of-age History of Love.
The Karlovy Vary festival’s Horizons section will present the music biopic 
For the third time the Karlovy Vary IFF will present the People Next Door program section, focusing on films with hearing-impaired protagonists.
One of the motion pictures presented in People Next Door will be The Silent Child (2017), which took this year’s Academy Award® for Best Live Action Short Film. This emotive movie will be presented by actress and screenwriter Rachel Shenton and director Chris Overton.
The Silent Child tells the story of a four-year-old profoundly deaf girl who, thanks to a social worker played by Rachel Shenton, emerges from a world of silence by means of sign language. The script was inspired by the personal experiences of the British actress and writer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxwBd9OMOC4
Screenwriter-producer-director Barry Levinson, who won an Academy Award for Rain Man, will accept the Crystal Globe for Outstanding Artistic Contribution to World Cinema at this year’s Karlovy Vary festival.
The Karlovy Vary festival continues its tradition of recognizing the most important personalities of world cinema, the likes of which include directors William Friedkin, Jerry Schatzberg, and Ken Loach, and screenwriter Paul Laverty. In his writing and directing capacity, Academy Award winner and five-time nominee Barry Levinson deftly combines personal stories with an often satirical look at society, and his movies have fundamentally influenced numerous young filmmakers.
Barry Levinson established himself as a writer of successful television shows. With his onetime wife, Valerie Curtin, he then wrote the movie script for Norman Jewison’s courtroom drama …and justice for all (1979), which brought them an Oscar nomination. He debuted as a director with the comedy-drama Diner (1982), receiving his second Oscar nomination for the script. Ivan Král, a Czech musician based in the US, co-wrote the film music.
Subsequent titles confirmed his reputation with critics and audiences: The Natural (1984) with Robert Redford, Tin Men (1987) with Richard Dreyfuss and Danny DeVito, and Good Morning, Vietnam (1987) with Robin Williams.
This year marks the 30th anniversary of the legendary picture Rain Man (1988), awarded four Oscars (e.g. Best Director for Barry Levinson) and numerous other honors, including the Golden Bear at the Berlinale and the David di Donatello for Best Foreign Film. Under Levinson’s guidance, Dustin Hoffman turned in one of his most memorable performances and Tom Cruise extended his star status while paired up with onscreen girlfriend Valeria Golino. His next movie, the drama Avalon (1991), earned Levinson another Oscar nomination, this time for Best Original Screenplay. The Warren Beatty vehicle Bugsy (1991), based on the life of the well-known gangster, brought Levinson another two Academy Award nominations – for best director and picture.
Recently turned 20, Levinson’s movie Wag the Dog is a behind-the-scenes political parody (once again) starring Dustin Hoffman in an Oscar-nominated role. The film earned Barry Levinson a Silver Bear – Special Jury Prize at Berlinale in 1998.
Similar to his work with Hoffman, with whom he also shot the drama Sleepers (1996) and the sci-fi picture Sphere (1998), he teams up with other Hollywood stars for multiple productions, including Robert De Niro (Wag the Dog, What Just Happened, 2008) and Robin Williams (Toys, 1992; Man of the Year, 2006).
Levinson produces the majority of his movies and has backed a number of ambitious project by other directors, among others Mike Newell’s crime drama Donnie Brasco (1997) and Neil LaBute’s romantic drama Possession (2002).
Barry Levinson will present his latest directorial effort at KVIFF, the HBO-produced drama Paterno, and will introduce Rain Man and the timeless satire Wag the Dog.
Actor Jaromír Hanzlík will receive the President’s Award for Artistic Contribution to Czech Cinema at the upcoming 53rd Karlovy Vary IFF. The Karlovy Vary festival will also screen Searching, directed by Antonín Máša and Jan Čuřík.
Jaromír Hanzlík, who celebrated his 70th birthday this year, has been a star of the Czech stage and screen, both large and small, for decades. He began his rewarding career at a young age; in 1966, the 18 year old earned an engagement on one of the foremost Prague stages, Vinohrady Theater. Until his departure in the early 1990s Hanzlík filled numerous roles in seminal plays by Czech and world dramatists, including The Outlaw, Hamlet, Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich, The Government Inspector, Crime and Punishment, Cyrano de Bergerac, and Oedipus.
At the same time, he snagged his first film roles, and they were significant because he had already worked with a number of directors. He began his acting career in children’s TV movies, portraying roles that included Huckleberry Finn. In film, director Zdeněk Sirový cast him in the lead in Das finnische Messer (1965), after which he regularly appeared in other films. His filmography includes the above-mentioned Searching (1965), as well as Every Young Man (1965, dir. Pavel Juráček), an adaptation of František Hrubín’s Romance for Trumpet (1966, dir. Otakar Vávra), Coach to Vienna (1966, dir. Karel Kachyňa), the war film The Marathon (1968, dir. Ivo Novák), The Joke (1968, dir. Jaromil Jireš), and Honor and Glory (1968, dir. Hynek Bočan). He took on comedy as his next genre, and thanks to television series (“Such a Normal Family,” “Hospital at the End of the City,” “There Once Was a House,” “Ambulance,” “Circus Humberto,” “Good Water”), stage productions (The Lodgers, Father or Brother, and A Letter Written in Spanish), and movies (Majesties and Cavaliers, 1969; A Night at Karlstein, 1973; How to Drown Dr. Mracek, The Lawyer, 1974; and Summer with a Cowboy, 1976), Jaromír Hanzlík became one of the most beloved Czech actors. Television, in turn, also offered him superb dramatic roles, including in Jiří Hubač’s award-winning work The Fall of Icarus (1977) and its loose sequel Migratory Birds (1983).
In the 1980s he enjoyed success alongside Jiří Menzel, under whose direction he portrayed distinctive, idiosyncratic, and tragicomic characters à la Hrabal, such as the palavering uncle Pepin in Shortcuts (1980), the enthusiastic junk collector Leli from The Snowdrop Festival (1983), and the rather dull castle librarian Bernard Spara in a film based on the Vladislav Vančura novel The End of Old Times (1989).
At the beginning of the 1990s Jaromír Hanzlík decided to curtail his acting work; since then he only rarely accepts roles and those are carefully selected. Nevertheless, his work from this period includes significant parts as well – for example, in the TV movie The Witness (2001) and the sequel to the TV series “Ambulance,” as well as in Robert Sedláček’s movie comedy Men in Rut (2009). His most recent cinema role to date came in Jan Pachl’s crime drama Gangster Ka (2015).
image: Jaromír Hanzlík (Credit: L. Hatašová)
Richard Linklater[/caption]
The 53rd Karlovy Vary IFF will dedicate a special section to the Austin Film Society, which was founded in 1985 by Richard Linklater, who will be among guests of the program focusing on filmmakers from Texas. AFS began as a film club that attracted students, artists and cinema die-hards which quickly grew into an institution supporting film culture and film production in a vibrant and growing Texas film community.
Founder and Artistic Director Richard Linklater commented on the Karlovy Vary honor with the following: “I’m so proud that AFS is receiving this incredible honor from the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. KVIFF is fully committed to the discovery of new voices. It’s deeply humbling that they’ve chosen to tribute AFS by shining a light on the community of independent artists that we’ve worked so hard to nurture. With this series of films, KVIFF celebrates creativity and uniqueness of vision, which have been the only consistent themes in the many wonderful films that have come out of Texas over the past 40 years.”
Made in Texas: Tribute to Austin Film Society will present nine feature-length films and two programs of short films. Slacker, the iconic first feature of the Austin Film Society’s founder Richard Linklater, takes us to roam around Austin’s streets during an ordinary hot Texas day, meeting one-of-a-kind locals and eccentrics. Contemporary western action El Mariachi, the debut feature by Robert Rodriguez, tells the story of a kind-hearted musician who accidentally gets entangled in a web of violence.
Offbeat indie The Slow Business of Going by Greek writer-director Athina Rachel Tsangari showcases a more experimental side of film production coming from Austin. The documentary scene will be represented by Laura Dunn’s The Unforeseen, a striking, deeply poetic take on the clash between greedy developers and the local community defending the environment of the recreational area in Barton Springs.
Among the recent films from Texas, the festival will show Take Shelter, the award-winning psychological thriller of Cannes favourite Jeff Nichols, David Zellner’s minimalistic drama Kid-Thing, Bob Byington’s witty comedy Somebody Up There Likes Me and Andrew Bujalski’s retro stylised drama Computer Chess, set in a software programmers’ community, as well as a program of contemporary short films by notable up-and-coming Texas filmmakers.
The section will also include Last Night at the Alamo directed by a pioneer of Texas independent film scene, Eagle Pennell, and shot two years before the foundation of the Austin Film Society. Other early works will include a program of six shorts originally curated by Jonathan Demme as a snapshot of the punk and new wave scenes of Austin in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Director Václav Kadrnka, 52nd Karlovy Vary IFF[/caption]
The awards were presented at the closing ceremony of the 52nd Karlovy Vary IFF, and the fatherhood drama Little Crusader by Václav Kadrnka was awarded the Grand Prize – Crystal Globe and $25,000.
The directing prize was won by Slovak filmmaker Peter Bebjak, who was presenting his film The Line at the festival. In the competition East of the West, the road movie How Viktor “the Garlic” took Alexey “the Stud” to the Nursing Home by Russian director Alexander Hant won that award.
The award for best feature-length documentary went to the Spanish film Lots of Kids, a Monkey and a Castle. And the Právo Audience Award was awarded to the American crime drama taking place on a Native American reservation Wind River starring Jeremy Renner.
The 53rd Karlovy Vary IFF will be held from June 29th to July 7th, 2018.
The non-statutory awards of the 52nd 
Censor (Cenzorka)[/caption]
The Slovakian film Censor (Cenzorka), directed by Peter Kerekes and written by Ivan Ostrochovský, is the winner of the Works in Progress Award at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. The film received the award for “its original and vivid human portrait of a lonely woman.”
In the film, Irina Alexandrovna works as a censor in an Odessa prison. The inspection of letters is required by law in order to prevent the continuation of criminal activity. But the real criminals use smartphones, and old-fashioned letters are only used for declarations of love. So Irina spends eight hours a day in her office reading love letters. Through her, we follow various love affairs that only she can observe. Although she sees how women being used, and how the relationships end in disaster for them, she cannot take any action. Our heroine is a single woman and after twelve years of reading love letters full of the lies men tell, she is not capable of any relationship. If a guy on a date says “You are special,” she feels sick. But of course even she dreams of love.
The film, also produced by Peter Kerekes, is based on real situations and real characters and involved in-depth research conducted by the filmmakers at numerous prisons. The script was distilled from these materials, stories and characters. The plot follows the tragicomic micro-love stories between jailed men and women on the outside, as seen through the main protagonist. The film was shot with actors and non-actors (prisoners and ex-prisoners), mostly in a real setting, a real prison. The film’s expected premiere is in 2018.
The Stand-In (La Controfigura), directed and written by Rä di Martino was awarded the Eurimages Lab Project Award for its “ironic visual experimental approach to innovative narrative and for being an intersection of art and film.”
In The Stand-In, a small crew has been traveling around Marrakech and its surroundings looking for swimming pool locations for the remake of an American movie in which a man crosses the county, pool by pool, to reach his home. The filmmakers rehearse the shots to find the path through the city and the pools that the main actor will run and swim through. As we watch his struggles to become more than just a stand-in figure, the real actors and film crew burst onto the scene on a set where nobody seems to be in the right place. A film in search of itself, looking for where the real film is.