Variations invite you to exclusive previews of new films by Jarmusch, Sorrentino, and Linklater

For the fifth time, Karlovy Vary will be enlivened by the unique combination of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival and the Czech Philharmonic. The two-day program of the Variations event on November 21-22, 2025 will offer exclusive film previews, a concert by the Czech Philharmonic, and a series of free chamber concerts at iconic locations in Karlovy Vary.

This year's Variations will once again present three highly anticipated films in exclusive preview screenings! All will be screened on Saturday, November 22, at the Kaiserbard in Karlovy Vary, and tickets are now on sale.

Jim Jarmusch's new film Father Mother Sister Brother, which won the Golden Lion in Venice this year, takes a gentle humorous look at family relationships in three short stories. Richard Linklater's new film, Nouvelle Vague, delighted all cinephiles in Cannes with its affectionate and humorous look behind the scenes of the making of the key French New Wave film Breathless. In Paolo Sorrentino's new film, La Grazia, the director's favorite, Toni Servillo, plays the Italian president commenting on the folly of human behavior, for which he won an acting award in Venice.

In addition to attractive film previews, the fifth Variations also feature a series of three chamber concerts in unusual venues around Karlovy Vary, which are free of charge to the public.

On Friday at 5 p.m., you can listen to compositions by Hummel, Beethoven, and Prokofiev performed by a wind octet in the Zander Hall of the Kaiserbad. On Saturday at 2 p.m., violinist Jan Mráček will play Schubert and Bartholdy accompanied by a string chamber orchestra at the Thermal Spring Colonnade. For the first time, the Post Court will also resound with Variations, where on November 22 at 4:30 p.m., the music of Antonín Dvořák will symbolically return, whose symphony "From the New World" had its European premiere here in 1894.

The special concert of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra at the Karlovy Vary Municipal Theater will take place on Friday, November 21, at 8 p.m., and the last tickets are still available. The exclusive program, conducted by American star conductor Keith Lockhart, will open with music by W. A. Mozart, which also opened the Oscar-winning film Amadeus. The concert, entitled Variations between Film and Music, will also feature works by Josef Mysliveček, to whom Petr Václav dedicated his film Il Boemo, and Leoš Janáček, a favorite of Milan Kundera. Concertmaster Jiří Vodička will perform Korngold's Violin Concerto in D major, which features melodies from several Hollywood films of the 1930s, and the concert will conclude with music by William Walton, composed for Laurence Olivier's directorial debut, Henry V.