A New Generation of European Filmmakers Steps into the International Spotlight at KVIFF

Generation NEXT of European Cinema returns to the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival with a new selection of standout emerging directors from across Europe, underlining the programme’s role as a key launchpad for the continent’s next generation of filmmaking talent.

Presented by European Film Promotion (EFP) in cooperation with KVIFF and with the support of Creative Europe – the MEDIA Programme of the European Union, the 2026 edition welcomes Allwyn as the programme’s new main partner.

The line-up brings together recent European film school graduates whose short films will screen during this year’s festival. Nominated by their respective national film promotion institutes, EFP’s member organisations, and selected by KVIFF Artistic Director Karel Och and his programming team, the filmmakers will take part in a curated programme of promotion, industry meetings and networking activities before and during the festival.

Showcasing a broad range of voices, styles and perspectives, this year’s FUTURE FRAMES filmmakers reflect the creative diversity shaping the future of European cinema:

Several of the selected directors are already making an impact on the international festival circuit. Finnish filmmaker Helmi Donner presents The Lightning Rod, which was selected for La Cinef, the official Cannes Film Festival section for short films made in film schools. The poetic horror drama follows a young mother fleeing a toxic relationship and reconnecting with her grandmother, who carries wounds of her own. The film is Donner’s MA graduation work from ELO Film School Finland at Aalto University.

Family, memory and unresolved histories form one of the strong thematic threads across the line-up. Croatian director Jozo Schmuch’s Shallow Ground (Academy of Dramatic Arts in Zagreb) follows an elderly mother whose son, missing since the war thirty years earlier, suddenly appears at her door looking exactly as he did when he disappeared. Lithuanian filmmaker Arnas Balčiūnas (Lithuanian Theatre and Music Academy) explores emotional distance and family estrangement in Past the Hill of Napoleon’s Hat, in which a son brings his father home from a psychiatric hospital to an indifferent family. Most recently, Balčiūnas was selected for this year’s Cannes Critics’ Week Short Film Competition. In Ban Dal (Half-moon), Swiss-Korean director Hae-Sup Sin (Zurich University of the Arts, ZHdK) turns to international adoption, following a Swiss adoptive mother and her son as they travel to South Korea to meet his biological mother.

Other films take more formally playful, genre-driven or visually distinctive approaches to personal and social questions. Spanish director Júlia Coldwell Serra’s award-winning Nobody Barks (Catalonia Film and Audiovisual School, ESCAC) uses absurd comedy and folklore to examine guilt after a woman accidentally kills her nephew’s dog and invents a myth to cover it up. Czech filmmaker Marie Lukáčová (UMPRUM) combines live action, 2D and 3D animation and rap-inspired musical sequences in Orla, an eco-feminist fairytale that had its world premiere at IFFR Rotterdam. In Zampano, French filmmaker Teilo Quillard (La Fémis, École Nationale supérieure des métiers de l'image et du son) draws on his own circus background for a dreamlike story of vertigo, inheritance and the intense bond between a son and his father.

Questions of the body, identity and growing up are also central to the selection. Dutch director Ollie Launspach’s graduation film from the Netherlands Film Academy, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, is an intimate and playful portrait of transition, insecurity and love, built around conversations with his girlfriend, Sterre Mulder, and premiered in the IDFA Competition for Short Documentary. Swedish filmmaker André Vaara’s Sister of Mine (Stockholm University of the Arts) is a sensitive coming-of-age portrait of longing beyond the norms of 2000s boyhood. It explores childhood, jealousy and sibling rivalry through the story of ten-year-old Noel.

The pressures of youth, family responsibility and social environment come into focus in Slovenian-American director David Champaigne’s Self-Sown (University of Ljubljana, Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film and Television). Set in a summer-scorched Ljubljana district, the film follows teenage Nikola as he moves between street life, caring for his mother and the vulnerability beneath his tough exterior.

As part of its ongoing commitment to supporting emerging creative talent, Allwyn will once again award one director from this year’s FUTURE FRAMES selection a one-month scholarship in Los Angeles, with the recipient chosen by a jury of US talent agents from Range Media Partners and United Talent Agency.

Further strengthening FUTURE FRAMES’ long-term support for emerging talent, EFP’s new partnership with Les Arcs Industry Village will offer one participant a wild card entry into the festival’s Talent Village programme in December. The final selection will be made by the Industry Village team.