World premiere of digitally restored copy of Truffaut's Two English Girls. Alexandre O. Philippe returns to the festival

The section Out of the Past

In collaboration with the respected French production and distribution company MK2, which this year celebrates its fiftieth anniversary, the festival will present the world premiere of a digitally restored version of Two English Girls, François Truffaut’s poetic period drama about a love triangle. This October, it will mark forty years since the legendary French filmmaker’s untimely death. Fans of one of France’s most beloved filmmakers (but newcomers to Truffaut as well) will not want to miss the portrait documentary François Truffaut, My Life, a Screenplay, which uses a wealth of previously unseen material from Truffaut’s life from both private and artistic spheres.

Alexandre O. Philippe, renowned creator of original documentary essays about the history of cinema, returns to the festival with a special programme based on his documentary The Taking (2021). The film explores American mythology through the fascinating phenomenon of Monument Valley and the socio-philosophical dimensions of the American landscape. Along with The Taking, Philippe will present three films that offer a singular perspective of the American landscape in cinema: John Ford’s Fort Apache (1948), Wim Wenders’s Paris, Texas (1984, in a newly restored copy), and Bruno Dumont’s Twentynine Palms (2003).

Another restored gem being shown at KVIFF this year is Let’s Get Lost (1989), famous photographer Bruce Weber’s award-winning documentary look at the final years in the life of the brilliant jazz trumpeter and singer Chet Baker, which was honored with an Oscar nomination.

This year’s “chapter” in Karlovy Vary’s ongoing series dedicated to the king of American independent cinema, John Cassavetes, will show his final writer/director feature, Love Streams (1984), in which he and his lifelong partner and muse Gena Rowlands portray an unusual pair of siblings.

Iva Janžurová and Theodora Remundová, mother and daughter, documentary subject and documentary director, two women whose unusual documentary portrait of legendary Czech actress Janžurová, Actress, will have its premiere in Karlovy Vary. 

Honored with a recent digital restoration is also the quirky Czechoslovak satire Murdering the Devil (1970), an inimitable work of art that brought together two exceptionally talented individual – director, screenwriter, and costume designer Ester Krumbachová and actress Jiřina Bohdalová.

The festival will commemorate the centenary of the birth of a major figure in the history of domestic cinema, director Oldřich Lipský, and his exceptional collaboration with screenwriter Jiří Brdečka, with a screening of a 35mm print of the cult comedy classic The Mystery of the Carpathian Castle (1981), an exhilaratingly brilliant mix of genres filled with nuanced wordplay.