This year, Out of the Past section will look back at the history of KVIFF

An unmissable part of the jubilee 60th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, which marks 80 years since its inception this year, will be a special edition of the popular "classic" section Out of the Past.

"One of the festival's most popular permanent programs, which regularly looks back at the history of cinema, will take on a celebratory form this year," says the festival's Artistic Director, Karel Och. "It will consist of twenty carefully selected films from previous editions of the festival, which are firmly linked to its history as milestones key to the KVIFF’s identity and reputation."

Among the films, dating from 1946 to the recent past, is the masterpiece by the duo Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, A Matter of Life and Death, which festival visitors in Czechoslovakia first admired in August 1947. More than twenty years later, in 1970, Ken Loach—a compatriot of the iconic duo—personally accepted the festival's top prize for best film for his acclaimed drama Kes.

From its very beginnings, the festival located in West Bohemia has been a warm home for the best of Mexican cinema. Emilio Fernández, a titan of Mexican directing, sent his films to Karlovy Vary several times, starting with Río Escondido in 1948. Konrad Wolf, a legend of East German cinema, also participated in the festival multiple times; his extraordinary drama Lissy won one of the main prizes in 1957.

Representing the colors of the former Czechoslovakia will be the drama The Defendant, winner of the Grand Prix at the 1964 KVIFF, filmed by the future Oscar-winning duo Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos. Also featured is Juraj Jakubisko’s prized film Birds, Orphans and Fools, which will be personally introduced by the legendary actress Magda Vášáryová. This cult "banned" parable only had its true premiere more than twenty years after it was filmed, at the 1990 KVIFF.

For a long time, the print of one of the fundamental films in Australian cinematic history, the adventure drama Captain Thunderbolt, was considered lost—until 2024, when an original, uncut 35mm print was found in the Czech National Film Archive. This year’s celebratory program will commemorate the premiere of New Zealand director Cecil Holmes’s film in the competition of the 7th KVIFF in 1952.

The complete list of films in the Out of the Past – KVIFF 60/80 retrospective will be published at the beginning of June.