Karlovy Vary International Film Festival 

“Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser” goes the quote used in this dynamic documentary glance at a society that naively prides itself on superlatives. Using the example of his own family, whose members succumb to the fleeting magic of steroids in the hopes of looking like Rambo or Conan, the director congenially illustrates the pitfalls behind the philosophy of “victory at all cost”.

A film about the different forms of love experienced by the sight-impaired, compiled from four stories which illustrate just how rich the world is for people like them. A world which is very often much brighter and more colourful than our own.

For celebrated American animators the Quay brothers, Moscow native of Polish descent Ladislas Starewitch (1882–1965) is a film alchemist; for other specialists who appear in this playful and deftly edited profile, he is a film pioneer who, at the dawn of animation, invented all his special effects himself.

This highly personal film by Jana Boková, examining the lives of several Czech emigrés such as philosopher Václav Bělohradský, songwriter Vlasta Třešňák, poet Petr Král, and also the director herself, reflects upon the various aspects of emigration and reaches the conclusion that, once a person has been uprooted, he can never cultivate his native roots again.

In a masterful composition of shots, the director offers an intimate portrait of a dilapidated cosmic ray research station located on the top of Mount Aragaz in Armenia, and its staff of six, living here in total isolation from the outside world.

A portrait of Iranian artist Jamshid Aminfar who isn’t afraid to go out onto the streets of Teheran to exhibit and sell his work; and this is also where he creates his distinctive paintings reminiscent of canvases by Keith Harring or the gloomy images of Edvard Munch. Almost a third of the film is taken up with eye-catching animation, bringing to life the demonic figures from Aminfar’s paintings.

The makers of this film collected some fascinating material on their travels through Denmark, Mozambique, Japan, Thailand and the USA, which they used to compose a sensitive documentary piece about universal human qualities and their dependence on the given living conditions.

Pascal Kleiman was born without arms, and is one of today's most sought-after disc jockeys in spite of it. Ángel Loza tells the amazing life story of a man who succeeded in fulfilling his dreams in defiance of a restrictive handicap. The film, which features a brilliant musical accompaniment, is also narrated in part by Kleiman’s friends and colleagues, Laurent Garnier and Rob.

A poetic portrait of a young Dutch-Polish couple who decide to live without the trappings of civilisation in a God-forsaken corner of northern Poland.

Shot with an extraordinary sense for detail, this film takes us on a visit to see two old Hungarian sisters who emigrated to America years ago to earn their living as dressmakers.

In his latest film, young Hungarian director Gyula Nemes follows on from his previous visual study The Dike of Transience with a film of related theme and form. Again in raw black-and-white images, we encounter the distinctive figures inhabiting the houseboats close to Budapest’s Kopaszi dam.

A stunning reconstruction of the “artistic crime of the century”: on 7 August 1974 Frenchman Philippe Petit attempted illegally to step across a steel wire suspended between New York’s twin towers, at the time the highest buildings in the world.

The main character in this film is Lyuba, who flees with her nine children to the countryside to escape from a violent husband. This remarkable record of the dramatic and intimate moments in Lyuba’s life at the same time offers a highly authentic look at the bleak reality of today’s Russia.

Set against the compelling reconstruction of the chequered history of the Maori woman Puhi, using a series of inspired acted sequences, well-known New Zealand director Vincent Ward describes the challenges facing the original inhabitants of New Zealand during the first half of the 20th century.

The main protagonist in another of Helena Třeštíková’s long-term documentaries is the die-hard criminal and imaginative writer René Plášil. With raw authenticity, the director records the luckless fate of René over a period of twenty years as he yo-yos between prison and freedom.