Fifty-year-old Murad’s life is shaken to the core when he learns that his youthful brother is homosexual. Murad want to assist his brother, however their conventional Muslim household is towards it. In consequence, he finds himself subjected to pressures from all sides – from his father, who has shut ties to the native imam, and from his brother’s circle of pals as properly. He want to assist everybody, however as he slowly falls right into a spiral of conflicts and mounting difficulties, he finds that he, too, is in want of assist. One other integral a part of this household drama is the theme of migration and dialogue – not simply between totally different religions, however inside communities themselves. For his fourth function movie, director Nader Saeivar collaborated with Jafar Panahí, who contributed as producer and editor.
The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (KVIFF) on Tuesday unveiled the lineup of its important Crystal Globes competitors, the Proxima competitors part and the Particular Screenings program for its sixtieth version and 80th anniversary edition, together with Hijamat, a contest film from Iranian director Nader Saeivar (The Witness), which was produced and edited by Cannes Palme d’Or 2025 winner and Oscar nominee Jafar Panahi (It Was Just an Accident), who is about to again face trial in Iran on costs of “propaganda against the regime.”
Throughout the lineup, cineastes can discover tales about homosexual and lesbian life, the Ukraine battle, in addition to such matters as suicide and trauma.
The fest within the Czech spa city, whose 2026 version might be working July 3-11, additionally unveiled its competitors jury, made up of Joachim Trier co-writer and two-time Norwegian Oscar nominee Eskil Vogt (Sentimental Worth, The Worst Particular person within the World), Amanda Nell Eu (Tiger Stripes), a filmmaker primarily based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Justin Chang, movie critic at The New Yorker and NPR’s “Fresh Air,” Czech sound designer, producer, composer and educator Pavel Rejholec, producer Nadia Turincev, who not too long ago launched her solo firm Sento Movies to provide “unrealizable” movies.
In the meantime, the Proxima jury brings collectively Estrella Araiza, the final director of the Guadalajara International Movie Pageant and Cineteca UDG, producer Dirk Decker, co-founder of Hamburg-based Tamtam Movie, Devika Girish, editor at Movie Remark journal and a talks programmer on the New York Movie Pageant, Jakub Felcman, “a Czech screenwriter, festival organizer, film critic, creative producer, director, and qualified plumber,” and Lithuanian director and screenwriter Marija Kavtaradze (The Visitor).
‘Hijamat,’ courtesy of KVIFF
This 12 months’s double anniversary permits KVIFF to “look back at the rich past of an event established shortly after the end of World War II, but also to examine how closely the current programming team’s view of world cinema’s evolution resonates with the pioneering work of their predecessors, both past and recent,” mentioned creative director Karel Och. The practically 40 titles in the primary program “boast extraordinary geographical diversity,” he emphasised. “The exclusive presence of Myanmar and Colombia in the Crystal Globe competition naturally connects across a six-decade arc with the progressive decision of one of the festival’s founders and long-time director of programming, A. M. Brousil, to focus intensively on the then-young and undiscovered non-European cinemas.”
And Och highlighted that the filmmakers presenting their work this 12 months “cross boundaries, both spiritually and physically.” In spite of everything, “the countries of production or filming locations of these projects often differ – even continentally – from the filmmakers’ countries of origin,” which is “far more commonplace today than in the past.”
Concluded the creative director: “One of the defining characteristics of the films in this year’s main program is the directors’ impressive effort to comprehend the diversity and complexity of the world through firsthand confrontation, and through a relentless search for the relationship between the artistic and the political, the intimate and the societal.”
Veterans of world cinema and first-time administrators are each featured at KVIFF this 12 months. Certainly, the fest highlighted 15 first-timers throughout its Crystal Globe Competitors, the Proxima Competitors and the Particular Screenings part.
Crystal Globe competitors movie Hijamat, starring Kida Khodr Ramadan, Moritz Bleibtreu and Nastassja Kinski, focuses on Murad, 50, whose life is “shaken to the core when he learns that his younger brother is gay,” based on a synopsis. “Murad would like to support his brother, but their traditional Muslim family is against it. As a result, he finds himself subjected to pressures from all sides – from his father, who has close ties to the local imam, and from his brother’s circle of friends as well. He would like to help everyone, but as he slowly falls into a spiral of conflicts and mounting difficulties, he finds that he, too, is in need of help. … For his fourth feature film, director Nader Saeivar collaborated with Jafar Panahí, who contributed as producer and editor.”
Miroslav Terzić’s 3 Weeks After, a few group of highschool college students on a category journey to Bulgaria, can be a part of the primary competitors. “When their bus breaks down, they find themselves stranded in an old hotel near the mountains,” reads a synopsis. “The atmosphere grows tense when the quiet and withdrawn Zoza decides to talk about his best friend’s recent suicide.”
Among the many Proxima movies are the likes of Isabelle Tollenaere’s debut fiction function Paris Paris, Mein Freund der Pornostar by Austrian director Rosa Friedrich, U.Ok. manufacturing Rain Catcher, set in London, from Michele Fiascaris, and Japanese director Shuntaro Uchida’s Incinerator (Shokyakuro).
‘My Friend the Pornstar,’ courtesy of KVIFF
In the meantime, the Particular Screenings lineup contains the world premiere of The Story of Documentary Movie – Nineteen Eighties, the doc sequence from director, and KVIFF veteran, Mark Cousins that has debuted different movies at different massive festivals earlier this 12 months.
British filmmaker Rebekah Fortune’s (Simply Charlie) Studying to Breathe Beneath Water, starring Rory Kinnear and Maria Bakalova, which was offered at Cannes within the BFI’s Nice 8 Showcase final 12 months, can be a part of the Particular Screenings. “Eight-year-old Leo lives with his dad and a giant shark, which crashed through the roof of their home,” reads its synopsis. “Yes, you read that correctly. The shark is Leo’s best friend, to whom he can confide all his secrets. He can’t really talk to his dad; he must be missing mum, who’s been gone five years now. Then Anya, the au pair, bursts into their lives, and their world suddenly changes.”
Additionally unspooling within the Particular Screenings program might be Robert Richardson: The White Satan from director Jana Hojdová concerning the well-known cinematographer (Kill Invoice: Vol. 1 & 2, Inglourious Basterds) and Quentin Tarantino collaborator. “What started as a student exercise and master’s degree project soon evolved into a creative partnership and personal friendship,” explains a synopsis. “The more improbable the film’s premise seems, the more fascinated we become by its portrait of a distinctive and uncompromising artist, three-time Academy Award winner, and acclaimed collaborator of such directors as Oliver Stone, Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino.”
‘Robert Richardson: The White Devil,’ courtesy of KVIFF
Try the complete KVIFF 2026 lineup unveiled on Tuesday under.
CRYSTAL GLOBE COMPETITION
3 nedelje posle / 3 Weeks After
Director: Miroslav Terzić
Serbia, Bulgaria, 2026, 94 min, World premiere
Cherni pari za beli noshti / Black Cash for White
Director: Kristina Grozeva, Petar Valchanov
Bulgaria, Greece, 2025, 94 min, World premiere
Chica Checa
Director: Šimon Holý
Czech Republic, France, Slovak Republic, 2026, 96 min, World premiere
Cinco años, cuatro meses / 5 Years, 4 Months
Director: Esteban Hoyos García, Juan Miguel Gelacio Ramírez
Colombia, USA, 2025, 83 min, World premiere
Detrás de la lluvia / Behind the Rain
Director: Valeria Sarmiento
Chile, 2026, 97 min, World premiere
Gæsten / The Visitor
Director: Mads Mengel
Denmark, 2026, 99 min, World premiere
A Comfortable Household
Director: Jan-Eric Mack
Switzerland, 2026, 120 min, World premiere
Hijamat
Director: Nader Saeivar
Germany, 2026, 103 min, World premiere
The Lion at My Again
Director: Tonia Mishiali
Cyprus, Luxembourg, Greece, 2026, 106 min, World premiere
Pipes
Director: Karim Kassem
Lebanon, 2025, 112 min, World premiere
Prameň / Solely Lovely Issues to Look At
Director: Ivan Ostrochovský
Slovak Republic, Czech Republic, Hungary, 2026, 90 min, World premiere
Thit-thee Khu / Fruit Gathering
Director: Aung Phyoe
Myanmar, France, Czech Republic, 2026, 97 min, World premiere
PROXIMA COMPETITION
33 krokov / 33 Steps
Director: Anna Domček, Šimon Domček
Slovak Republic, Czech Republic, 2026, 71 min, World premiere
Camionero / Truck Driver
Director: Francisco Marise
Spain, Argentina, 2026, 84 min, World premiere
Contra la Naturaleza / Towards Nature
Director: Axel Bertha
Mexico, 2026, 86 min, World premiere
Enas olokliros anthropos schedon / A Entire Particular person Virtually
Director: Efthimis Kosemund-Sanidis
Greece, Bulgaria, Germany, Cyprus, Romania, 2025, 111 min, World premiere
Homo Sive Natura
Director: Giovanni C. Lorusso
Italy, 2026, 115 min, World premiere
The Ink-Stained Hand and the Lacking Thumb
Director: Yashasvi Juyal
India, 2026, 120 min, World premiere
Mein Freund der Pornostar / My Pal the Porn Star
Director: Rosa Friedrich
Austria, 2026, 94 min, World premiere
Milovník, nie bojovník / Lover, Not a Fighter
Director: Martina Buchelová
Slovak Republic, 2026, 108 min, World premiere
Paris Paris
Director: Isabelle Tollenaere
Belgium, 2026, 78 min, World premiere
Rain Catcher
Director: Michele Fiascaris
United Kingdom, 2026, 109 min, World premiere
Shokyakuro / Incinerator
Director: Shuntaro Uchida
Japan, 2026, 97 min, World premiere
Sitni lopovi / Petty Thieves
Director: Mate Ugrin
Croatia, Germany, France, 2026, 106 min, World premiere
SPECIAL SCREENINGS
Bára Basiková / Bára – Diary of a Rockstar
Director: Helena Třeštíková
Czech Republic, 2026, 97 min, World premiere
Dvě deci tuše / A Pint of Ink
Director: Ester Geislerová
Czech Republic, Slovak Republic, 2026, 83 min, World premiere
Kdyby se holubi proměnili ve zlato / If Pigeons Turned to Gold
Director: Pepa Lubojacki
Czech Republic, Slovak Republic, 2026, 110 min
Khaneh doost injast / The Pal’s Home Is Right here
Director: Maryam Ataei, Hossein Keshavarz
Iran, USA, 2025, 96 min, Worldwide premiere
Studying to Breathe Beneath Water
Director: Rebekah Fortune
Eire, United Kingdom, Netherlands, 2026, 95 min, World premiere
Město otců / Metropolis of Fathers
Director: Zdeněk Tyc
Czech Republic, Slovak Republic, Poland, 2026, 100 min, World premiere
Mistryně / Every part As It Ought to Be
Director: Bohdan Karásek
Czech Republic, 2026, 101 min, World premiere
Morten
Director: Ivan Pavljutskov
Estonia, Lithuania, 2026, 101 min, World premiere
Robert Richardson: The White Satan
Director: Jana Hojdová
Czech Republic, USA, 2026, 105 min, World premiere
The Story of Documentary Movie – Nineteen Eighties
Director: Mark Cousins
United Kingdom, 2026, 120 min, World premiere
To Die to Reside
Director: Yuliia Hontaruk
Ukraine, Latvia, Slovak Republic, 2026, 116 min, World premiere
Vyvolený / Gregorius, the Chosen One
Director: Tomasz Mielnik
Zpráva professional Minervu 2 / A Report for Minerva 2
Director: Miroslav Krobot, Lubomír Smékal
Czech Republic, 2026, 69 min, World premiere
