​​A Scary Demon and a Lone Visitor Enter the Crystal Globe Competition Today

Joining the Crystal Globe Competition today are two world premieres: the mysterious Hungarian demon Jimmy Jaguar and the lonely Lithuanian drama The Visitor. Both will be screened in the Grand Hall, Jimmy Jaguar at 5 p.m. and The Visitor at 8 p.m.

Renowned Hungarian director Bence Fliegauf has recently made two independent films without any institutional funding. Both have found their way to major film festivals. Forest: I See You Everywhere won the Silver Bear at the 2021 Berlinale, and now Jimmy Jaguar enters the race for the Crystal Globe at KVIFF.

Fliegauf had originally planned to make a documentary. In 2022, he attended a psychotherapeutic self-discovery course combined with family constellation training. “One of the trainers was suddenly possessed by an erratic energy that vibrated the whole room,” he recalls. That moment inspired a new concept in which a vengeful spirit possesses different bodies to carry out its sinister purposes.

The creative team believed it was the perfect premise for a series, because the demon drifts from one host to another, always completing the mission and never running out of sinners. Eventually, Fliegauf chose to make a pilot and insisted that it must stand alone as a complete film. Once filming began, there was no turning back. “A scary journey began, as if we found ourselves on an unstoppable horror train,” the director says. At KVIFF, you are invited to climb aboard.

The feature debut of director Vytautas Katkus, whose short films have screened at Cannes and Venice, promises a more introspective experience. The film follows Danielius, a new father who returns to his native Lithuania to sell his parents’ flat. “I find myself looking at parent-child relationships, especially ones that were distant or undefined, through a lens usually reserved for other close connections. Not because the bond was close, but because the absence leaves questions. Danielius is trying to understand whether the relationships in his life are truly meaningful, or if he’s maintaining them out of habit, a sense of duty, or because it’s what’s expected. What does it mean to be solitary, and could that, in itself, be a kind of clarity?” the director asks in the film.