Karlovy Vary International Film Festival 

Festival guests

Many filmmakers (film directors, actors), which are not listed at this site, is coming to Karlovy Vary to introduce their films. You can find their names with the films in catalogue.

Les Blank, USA

The 43rd Karlovy Vary IFF is honored to present a legend of American documentary filmmaking, LES BLANK (b. 1935), “a documentarian of folk cultures who transforms anthropology into art” (John Rockwell, The New York Times).

The Tampa, Florida native gained greater recognition with his portrait of a Texas musician, The Blues Accordin’ to Lightnin’ Hopkins (1970). Characteristic of Blank’s work are his cinematically refined, intimate investigations of people from the fringes of American society whose lives are saturated with music. Blank’s ubiquitous camera becomes a natural element of the New Orleans’s Mardi Gras in Always for Pleasure (1978), and plays a similar role regarding the Polish-American community of polka lovers in In Heaven There Is No Beer? (1984).

More info

Kim Bodnia, Denmark

Visitors at the Karlovy Vary festival will have the chance to meet one of the most striking Danish actors of today, Kim Bodnia (b. 1965). Bodnia drew attention with the role of a drug trafficker in the cult drama Pusher (1996). Czech audiences have had the opportunity to see him in the films In China They Eat Dogs (1999), Dragonfly (KVIFF, 2002) and Falling Sky (KVIFF, 2003). This year he will be coming to Karlovy Vary with the dark comedy Terribly Happy, which will receive it’s world premiere in the Competition section.

Saffron Burrows, United Kingdom

SAFFRON BURROWS will make her third visit to Karlovy Vary to personally introduce the American competition movie The Guitar, directed by Amy Redford.

Originally a professional model (Chanel, Yves Saint Laurent), she first made a fleeting appearance at the age of twenty in the drama In the Name of the Father (1993). Her first important role was the opportunist Nan, one of the three heroines in the romantic retro-film Circle of Friends (1995). After meeting director Mike Figgis, Saffron Burrows’ career took a remarkable turn. She appeared in five of his films, among them The Loss of Sexual (1997), Timecode ((2000) and Hotel (2001). All three films were screened in Karlovy Vary.
Apart from appearing in commercial films (Frida and Troy), Saffron Burrows continues to work with some of the world’s most original filmmakers (Raoul Ruiz – Klimt, Hal Hartley – Fay Grim, among others).

More info

Jakob Cedergren, Denmar

Festival visitors on the Karlovy Vary promenade have the opportunity to meet well-known Danish actor of Swedish origin Jakob Cedergren, who came to introduce the world premiere of the Danish competition film by Henrik Ruben Genz, Terribly Happy, along with others involved in the film’s making. This will be the second visit the outstanding actor has made to Karlovy Vary; in 2005 he presented Icelandic director Dagur Kári’s formally exceptional and widely awarded film Dark Horse (Cannes IFF, 2005). The filmography of this ever-more-frequently cast actor also includes The Journals of Knud Rasmussen and the comedy Clash of Egos.

Grégoire Colin, France

French actor Grégoire Colin (b. 1975) is here to support The Killer, writer-director Cédric Anger’s debut, which follows the development of the relationship between a hitman, played by Colin, and his target. The film screens in the Variety Critics’ Choice section. Colin previously came to Karlovy Vary in 2005 with the film The Lost Domain, which was competing for the Crystal Globe. The actor has had more than three dozen roles since beginning his screen career in the 1990 French film Le Silence d’ailleurs and won the Special Prize at the Locarno International Film Festival in 1996 for his role in the French film Nenette and Boni.

Robert De Niro, USA

Preeminent Actor, director and producer Robert De Niro, two-time Academy Award® winner, four-time Academy Award® nominee and Golden Globe winner, will receive the Crystal Globe for Outstanding Contribution to World Cinema at the 43rd Karlovy Vary International Film.

What Just Happened, starring De Niro, a Tribeca/Linson Films production from 2929 Productions, will be the opening night film at Karlovy Vary. The film premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival and was the closing night picture at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival. Directed by Academy Award® winning Barry Levinson, the film is based on the acclaimed, bestselling memoir by veteran Hollywood producer Art Linson, who wrote the screenplay and produced the film with De Niro and Jane Rosenthal. The executive producers are Todd Wagner and Mark Cuban.

More info

Melonie Diaz, USA

The young American actress will accompany the presentation of the new film by Michel Gondry, Be Kind Rewind.

Latin-American actress Melonie Diaz (b. 1984) garnered attention at this year’s Sundance festival where she was seen in four films. Her start as an actress is connected to director Tom DiCillo, who cast her in Double Whammy (2001). Another excellent opportunity came her way with Lords of Dogtown (2005). In 2006, she was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award (Best Supporting Actress) for her role in the New York crime drama A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints (2006).

More info

August Diehl, Germany

The festival also brings the young German actor August Diehl, whose competition film, by director Tom Schreiber, Dr. Alemán makes its world premiere here. The narrates the saga of a young German doctor who who finds himself intertwined with a Colombian street gang. Diehl comes from an artistic family, and debuted in director Hans-Christian Schmid’s cult thriller 23, and is also a well-known theater actor. Karlovy Vary has already seen him in 2004’s Love in Thoughts. Last year, the Horizons section saw Diehl’s The Counterfeiter, which competed in at the 2007 Berlin International Film Festival and that same year took the Oscar for Best Foreign Film. Diehl has won a handful of cinema awards in Germany.

Matteo Garrone, Italy

The Italian director whose latest film, Gomorrah, came away from the recent Cannes Film Festival with the Grand Prix will be coming to Karlovy Vary. Regular visitors to the KVIFF, where the distinct filmmaker will be presenting his film in person, are sure to remember his two previous films – The Embalmer (KVIFF, 2003) and First Love (KVIFF, 2004). Gomorrah, a brutally raw fresco based on Roberto Saviano’s bestselling novel of the same name, shows the ways in which the Neapolitan Camorra controls day-to-day life. Critics have called the impressive drama “the truest film about the mafia ever made”.

Elio Germano, Italy

The Italian competition film The Early Bird Catches the Worm will also be joined in Karlovy Vary by the film’s central figure, Elio Germano, one of the most frequently cast Italian actors of the young generation. Though only 28 years old, he has already acted in a score of films, each more notable than the last. He has appeared for example in the film Breath, which was shown at the 2003 Karlovy Vary IFF, though audiences may best remember him from the film My Brother Is an Only Child (dir. Daniele Luchetti), which was screened here last year and which won him the Italian national David di Donatello award in 2007. In Italy he is renowned for his “unstarlike” behaviour, travelling by bus instead of car and living in a 40 m2 flat in the suburbs of Rome instead of a more luxurious quarter.

Danny Glover, USA

Danny Glover to receive the Festival President´s Award
One of today’s most highly regarded actors – who has worked with the likes of Steven Spielberg, Lars von Trier, and Wes Anderson – Danny Glover will receive an award given to actors, directors, and producers who have contributed in a fundamental way to the development of contemporary world film. In the Horizons section, the KVIFF program will also include two extraordinary movies in which Glover excelled in the past year: John Sayles’ Honeydripper and Michel Gondry’s Be Kind Rewind.

More info

Sakamoto Junji, Japan

Japanese director Sakamoto Junji (b. 1954) comes with the World Premiere of Children of the Dark, in the Horizons section. The film, based on Yan Sogil’s novel, takes on Japanese apathy toward issues in other Asian countries, such as child prostitution and organ harvesting. Junji was competing for the Crystal Globe in 2004 with his film Club Shinchugun (Out of This World) and won the Award of the Japanese Academy for Best Director in 2001 for his film Kao.

Sam Karmann, France

The creator of the French competition film True Enough, Sam Karmann, introduces the film with his wife, Catherine Olson, who in the film plays the important role of a jazz singer – which in fact she is. Sam Karmann also took a supporting role in his film, thus staying true to his original profession. Since the beginning of the 1980s he has worked as an actor, particularly in television movies and series, some of which could be seen in the Czech Republic (such as The Nark or Hell Train). Local cinemas also screened Agnés Jaoui’s Oscar-nominated tragicomedy It Takes All Kinds (2000), where he played the director. True Enough is not his first directorial endeavour: in 1992 he debuted with the short film Omnibus, which won him the Palme d’Or in Cannes, a BAFTA Award, and later an Oscar as well, while the comedy Kennedy and I, in which Catherine Olson also appeared, was nominated for the European Discovery of the Year in 1999

Christopher Lee, United Kingdom

Famous British actor Christopher Lee will receive the Festival President’s Award at the 43rd Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. The Festival President’s Award is given to actors, directors, and producers who have contributed in a fundamental way to the development of film, not merely in their own countries but around the world.
Within the program Master Classes – held on July the 10th at 2 p.m., Christopher Lee will introduce his work to general public, his many fans, as well as the film professionals. The event will take place in Captain Morgan’s tent.

More info

Phyllida Lloyd, United Kingdom

Phyllida Lloyd, director of Mamma Mia! will personally introduce her film at the Closing Ceremony.
Phyllida Lloyd (b. 1957, Bristol, Great Britain) graduated from Birmingham University in 1979 and then spent five years working in BBC television drama. She has been closely involved in the theatre since the mid-1980s. She was Associate Director at the Everyman Theatre in Cheltenham and Bristol’s Old Vic, and then directed acclaimed productions at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester. She gave her debut with the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1991 in a production of Thomas Shadwell’s play The Virtuoso. She is also a successful opera director and performed Benjamin Britten’s Gloriana, whose film version she directed in 2000. The previous year she received an offer to direct the stage musical Mamma Mia!, which became a global hit. This year’s film adaptation is the director’s feature film debut.

More info

James Marsh, United Kingdom

This remarkable British director will be personally introducing his latest film, Man on Wire, at this year’s festival. The impressive re-enactment of the “artistic crime of the century” – French tightrope walker Philippe Petit’s illegal attempt to walk a wire rope from one of New York’s twin towers to the other in August of 1974 – won the documentary jury and audience awards at this year’s Sundance festival. Though James Marsh will be making his first visit to Karlovy Vary this year, festival audiences nine years ago had the opportunity to appreciate the originality of his black-and-white Wisconsin Death Trip, which was screened in the Forum of Independents section.

Paul Mazursky, USA

Top American director Paul Mazursky will personally present his directorial debut Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (New Hollywood II section), as well as his latest film, the documentary Yippee: A Journey to Jewish Joy.

His rich acting career began in Kubrick’s drama Fear and Desire and Richard Brooks’ celebrated Blackboard Jungle. After his directorial debut with Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969) he made a series of notable films over the next two decades that included Alex in Wonderland (1970), Blume in Love (1973), Harry and Tonto (1974), Next Stop, Greenwich Village (1976), An Unmarried Woman (1978), Moscow on the Hudson (1984) and Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986). Mazursky’s most recent film is the documentary Yippee (2006), in which he describes his own trip to the annual meeting of several tens of thousands of Hasidic Jews in the Ukrainian town of Uman. Mazursky has been nominated five times for an Oscar, particularly for the screenplays he wrote for his films. He applied his considerable narrative talent in his memoirs Show Me the Magic (1999).

More info

Tom McCarthy, USA

Do you remember the captivating independent American film The Station Agent, which was shown in the “Sundance at Karlovy Vary” section of the 2006 KVIFF? Then you should know that the film’s director, Tom McCarthy, will be coming to this year’s festival to personally introduce his no-less-successful film The Visitor.

More info

Salvatore Mereu, Italy

Salvatore Mereu (b.1965) comes to Karlovy Vary for the first time to introduce his film Sonetàula. Its plot plays out on Sardinia between the late 1930s and the early 1950s, where the filmmaker was born and where he also set his first feature film, Three Step Dance, comprised of four stories and shown at our festival in 2004. Both films are meditations on the transformations that the Sardinian countryside has undergone, with the first capturing the island’s inhabitants over the course of the four seasons while Sonetàula, with its theme of the problematic relationship between a father and son, recalls Paolo and Vittorio Taviani’s famous Padre padrone. Both works met with success at a number of festivals (Venice, Berlin, Los Angeles).

Andrea Molaioli, Italy

Andrea Molaioli (1967), who long worked in as an assistant director and second director, primarily for the famous Nanni Moretti, will be personally presenting his first film, The Girl by the Lake, in Karlovy Vary. Though he also took part in the films of other well-known filmmakers before starting out on his own, even his episode of a successful television serial, Bandiera rossa e borsa nera , was produced in association with the company Sacher, founded by Moretti. With that in mind, the 41-year-old filmmaker must have been all the more satisfied when his debut garnered eleven David di Donatello awards at this year’s Italian national film awards, including all of the most important ones, while his mentor’s film Tichý zmatek mělo by být Quiet Chaos won only two.

Armin Mueller-Stahl, Germany

Internationally renowned actor and director Armin Mueller-Stahl will be a guest of the 43rd Karlovy Vary IFF. During his visit, he will officially open an exhibition of his paintings in the Karlovy Vary Art Gallery. The town will honor Armin Mueller-Stahl with the Festival President´s Award at the opening of the exhibition.

The well-known actor is returning to the Karlovy Vary festival after 11 years: in 1997 he was a guest at the 32nd KVIFF. Some may even remember a visit the young artist made to the festival in 1962.

More info

Silvia Munt, Spain

The renowned Catalan film and theatre actress, dancer and Goya Award recipient Silvia Munt is coming to KVIFF to present her feature debut as director Pretexts, which took the prize for best director at this year’s Malaga Film Festival. A beautiful picture about the imperfection of love, unfulfilled promises and pretexts – all impediments to happiness that we ourselves create – receives its international premiere as part of KVIFF’s main competition. As an actress Munt is known for films such as Secrets of the Heart by Montxo Armendáriz (seen in the Horizons section at Karlovy Vary in 1997), La Plaza del diamante (directed by Francesc Betriu) and Butterfly Wings (Juanma Bajo Ulloa). It was for the latter that Munt won the Goya Award. She received another one as director for the short documentary Lalia (1999). Silvia Munt is a member of the European Film Academy.

Francesco Patierno, Italy

The director of the Italian competition film The Early Bird Catches the Worm will be coming all the way from Buenos Aires – the city he is currently filming in and will have to return to the next day – to present the film’s international premiere. Though only visiting for a day, having already visited Karlovy Vary with his first film Pater familias in 2004, that time out of competition, and having enjoyed it there very much, he says the trip is worth the while. His second film was long in the works with Marco Baldini, the author of the autobiographical story, which tells of his rise and fall. The characters of the bitter comedy have mostly the same names as the people they are based on, in spite of the fact they are played by actors.

Rodrigo Plá, Mexico

Though originally from Uruguay, Rodrigo Plá (b. 1968) has worked in Mexican cinema since graduating from film school in Mexico City. Plá is coming to KVIFF to present his second feature film The Desert Within, a big hit at the Guadalajara International Film Festival and was the Closing film of the Critics´s Week at Cannes. A story of religious mania and protective love that turns to hatred, the picture is set in the 1920s and 1930s, a period of intense turmoil in Mexican history. His first feature film is the thriller La zona (2007), which gave him high reputation in the film world.

Arturo Ripstein, Mexico

The Tribute to Arturo Ripstein will present a showcase of the prominent Mexican director’s work.

“I’m interested in the dark side of the human psyche,” says director Arturo Ripstein. As the son of a successful Mexican producer, Arturo Ripstein (b. 1943, Mexico City) grew up among cables and spotlights, thus he knew what he wanted to be from an early age. Luis Buñuel became his teacher and role model, and Ripstein assisted him on The Exterminating Angel (1962). The two maintained contact even after Buñuel returned to Europe, and their friendship lasted until Buñuel’s death in 1983. Since his 1966 debut, Tiempo de morir, Ripstein has shot dozens of films in Mexico, France, and Spain.

More info

Nicolas Roeg, United Kingdom

Nicolas Roeg will personally present the festival’s Tribute to Nicolas Roeg.

British director Nicolas Roeg (1928) is a remarkable filmmaker, yet his name has somewhat disappeared from the film map over the last twenty years. If nothing else, the five films he made between the years 1970 and 1980, namely Performance (1970), Walkabout (1971), Don’t Look Now (1973), The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976) and Bad Timing (1980), with their original treatment of the film’s narrative structure, and their unforgiving, often excessive scrutiny of the human character, visibly shifted the expressive qualities of film media to a different league. Roeg entered the film industry at the end of the 1940s.

More info

John Sayles, USA

Writer-director John Sayles will present his movie Honeydripper as part of the festival’s Horizons section.

John Sayles (b. 1950, Schenectady, USA) began his film career working for Roger Corman, who also produced the film Piranha (1978) based on Sayles’s screenplay. He financed his directorial debut himself, Return of the Secaucus 7 (1979), in which he betrayed his sensitivity towards the depiction of social issues and human relationships. This trait appeared in quite diverse projects, such as the sci-fi The Brother from Another Planet (1984) or the competing title at Cannes Limbo (1999). He received his first Oscar nomination in 1993 for his original screenplay for the film Passion Fish (1992) and, four years later, he was also nominated for the script for the film Lone Star (1996). He features in many of his films in episodic roles and has directed three video clips for Bruce Springsteen. Honeydripper is his sixteenth film.

More info

Götz Spielmann, Austria

The Austrian director Götz Spielmann presents his most recent picture Revanche, which was included in the Panorama section in Berlin this year. Alongside Sonetàula (in the Horizons section at KVIFF), whose director Salvatore Mereu is also Karlovy Vary bound this year, Revanche was judged one of the biggest successes in Berlin. Indeed, Variety said both pictures were more interesting than the majority of films in competition, and people were even comparing Spielmann to the great German director Fassbinder. Two of the Austrian filmmaker’s previous films Antares and The Stranger were selected as his county’s entries for the Oscar for best foreign language film, while the former was screened at over 30 festivals. The same fate no doubt awaits Revanche, which took two critics’ awards at the Berlin IFF and is included in the Another View section at Karlovy Vary.

Jean-Francois Stévenin, France

The Belgian-French competition film Distant Tremors is represented not just by its director, Manuel Poutte, and lead actress, Amélie Daure, but also by the well-known French actor Jean-Francois Stévenin. His filmography contains 140 titles, and, though he often finds himself in supporting roles, his vigorous and quirky characters are a frequent presence in French cinema. One of his first roles was in Francoise Truffaut’s The Wild Child (L´enfant sauvage,1970), and Stévenin had roles in other Truffaut films like Such a Gorgeous Kid Like Me (Une belle fille comme moi, 1972), Day for Night (La Nuit américaine, 1973), for which he also served as an assistant director. He played himself in Truffaut’s Small Change (L´Argent de poche, 1976), but, for the next decade, his primary domain was in crime films, (exp. Two Lions in the Sun, The Police War), though he also had a part in Hunchback (Le Bossu, 1997) and the unforgettable character of a soldier in the Yves Boisset film Allons z´enfants (1981), which came to Karlovy Vary in 1982. Stévenin also acted and directed Mischka (2002), the screening of which he attended when it played at last year’s Febiofest.