Karlovy Vary International Film Festival 

Even though the European Film Awards, the European equivalent of Oscars, will not be officially announced until December, the European Film Academy released as every year the names of several winners already in October. And we are happy to report a strong link with the 44th KVIFF program. We are especially proud that the award European Achievement in World Cinema will go to the French actress Isabelle Huppert, who this year received a Crystal Globe for Outstanding Artistic Contribution to World Cinema from the hands of the festival president Jiří Bartoška in July in Karlovy Vary. Congratulations!

And, as last year, when the Prix ARTE for Best European Documentary Film went to René by Helena Trestikova, which had its world premiere in the official competition in Karlovy Vary, this year’s award will again go to a film selected for the official documentary film competition at the 44th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival – this year’s Prix Arte will be awarded at an official ceremony on December 12, 2009 in German Bochum to Swiss documentarist Peter Liechti for The Sound of Insects – Record of a Mummy, which uses an incredibly rich film language to follow the story of a man that decided to commit suicide by starvation. We would like to congratulate the author, whose victory was decided by the independent jury, whose members this year were documentary filmmaker Nino Kirtadzé from France/Georgia, Austrian producer and ORF editor Franz Grabner and Russian documentary filmmaker Viktor Kossakovsky.