Karel Och, inventive director of Karlovy Differ Intl. Movie Competition, has unveiled a lineup of virtually 40 titles in the primary program, premiering on the sixtieth version of the occasion within the Czech spa city at first of July.
Och stated, “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.”
CRYSTAL GLOBE COMPETITION
“3 nedelje posle” (3 Weeks After)
Director: Miroslav Terzić
Serbia, Bulgaria, 2026, 94 min, world premiere
A bunch of highschool college students set off for a category journey to Bulgaria. When their bus breaks down, they discover themselves stranded in an outdated lodge close to the mountains. The environment grows tense when the quiet and withdrawn Zoza decides to speak about his finest good friend’s current suicide. Why did Andrij select to finish his life? And wouldn’t it have been higher if Zoza hadn’t introduced it up? Like his earlier outings, Serbian director Miroslav Terzić’s third movie is characterised by an awesome, meticulously crafted sense of rigidity. “3 Weeks After” takes us into the weak world of adolescents, the place innocence is combined with cruelty. It additionally exposes the mechanisms of bullying in a society that closes its eyes at decisive moments when trying away is the very last thing we should always do.
“Cherni pari za beli noshti” (Black Cash for White)
Director: Kristina Grozeva, Petar Valchanov
Bulgaria, Greece, 2025, 94 min, world premiere
After years of saving cash from the small bribes they acquire, 60-year-old Marina and her husband Gosha from Bulgaria are getting ready for his or her dream journey to St. Petersburg to witness the White Nights. However when Russia invades Ukraine and the journey company vanishes with all their financial savings, the couple’s dream collapses together with their phantasm of management over their ethical ideas and the connection they’ve with one another. Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov, recipients of the 2019 Crystal Globe, return to Karlovy Differ with a tragicomic portrait of a technology pressured to reassess its values as they query every little thing that’s thought of black and white in post-Soviet society.
“Chica Checa”
Director: Šimon Holý
Czech Republic, France, Slovak Republic, 2026, 96 min, world premiere
Following a trilogy of low-budget movies, two of which (“Mirrors in the Dark” and “And Then There Was Love…”) have been screened in Karlovy Differ, Šimon Holý returns with the worldwide co-production “Chica Checa.” As soon as once more, the story revolves round a feminine protagonist: right here, the widowed village mail service Zdena (Pavla Tomicová), who tries to meet the final want of her ailing mom. A sequence of sudden occasions brings her nearer to her son Lukáš (Jan Cina) and awakens in her a eager for a special life. Holý as soon as once more confirms his expertise for remark and his means to create a vibrant portrait of his characters’ interior conflicts, all whereas giving Tomicová ample house to totally specific her performing skills.
“Cinco años, cuatro meses” (5 Years, 4 Months)
Director: Esteban Hoyos García, Juan Miguel Gelacio Ramírez
Colombia, U.S., 2025, 83 min, world premiere
Not solely did Martha lose her oldest son, however to at the present time she doesn’t know what occurred to him or his stays. After years of looking in useless, she meets Sandra, who affords her yet another chance, maybe her final hope: to set out for a distant place the place the road between the dwelling and the lifeless is blurred. The directorial duo of Juan Miguel Gelacio and Esteban Hoyos García offers voice to Colombian ladies who, after their kids’s disappearance, took the search into their very own palms. The movie’s subdued, targeted narrative calls consideration to one of the vital painful penalties of the nation’s long-lasting armed battle whereas portraying the seek for peace and reconciliation in a spot that has by no means witnessed a farewell.
“Detrás de la Lluvia” (Behind the Rain)
Director: Valeria Sarmiento
Chile, 2026, 97 min, world premiere
In all her movies, director and editor Valeria Sarmiento has questioned the connection between reminiscence and the unconscious. Is it higher to stay silent, hiding secrets and techniques in order that issues don’t change (as in “Secretos,” 2008), or to hunt true entry to probably the most painful reminiscences (as in “Huellas,” 2023)? In “Behind the Rain,” Sarmiento displays on the very idea of repression. Sofía has simply completed her psychology research in Valparaíso (the town the place Sarmiento was born) and returns to her hometown, Valdivia. Her return coincides with the invention of a younger woman’s physique, which awakens in her reminiscences of childhood sexual abuse. Like a scratched movie that appears like rain, Sofía should determine whether or not to cease the reminiscence from resurfacing or to look past the rain, past the buried fears of a whole nation.
“Gæsten” (The Visitor)
Director: Mads Mengel
Denmark, 2026, 99 min, world premiere
Contemporary dad and mom Karl and Emilie are trying ahead to a weekend at a seaside lodge, the place they plan to announce their baby’s identify and thus formally welcome him to the world. A day earlier than the celebration, nonetheless, Karl’s mom Vibeke reveals up, with whom he hasn’t spoken in a number of years. Constructing on the custom of latest Nordic cinema, debut filmmaker Mads Mengel tells the intimate story of a household that threatens to crumble when outdated wounds are opened up. What begins as a close-knit celebration turns into an uncomfortable confrontation with an unresolved previous that gained’t let the movie’s protagonists neglect who they are surely – or the place they arrive from.
“A Happy Family”
Director: Jan-Eric Mack
Switzerland, 2026, 120 min, world premiere
Niki works two jobs, however the little cash she earns is barely sufficient to cowl the dwelling bills for her and her two younger kids. At some point, when the kids are left unsupervised, they unintentionally set the kitchen on fireplace, and so the Swiss authorities place them with a foster household on the opposite aspect of the nation. Although forbidden from contacting her kids, Niki decides to trace them down. Based mostly on a real story, the primary Swiss movie to be screened in Karlovy Differ’s Crystal Globe competitors attracts its power from a decided but ambivalent protagonist whose actions make clear a inflexible social system whereas reflecting the battle between parental intuition and private accountability. Including to the movie’s robust dramatic arc is an exceptionally compelling efficiency by Anna Schinz.
“Hijamat”
Director: Nader Saeivar
Germany, 2026, 103 min, world premiere
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 in opposition to it. Because of this, 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 associates as nicely. 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 characteristic movie, director Nader Saeivar collaborated with Jafar Panahí, who contributed as producer and editor.
“The Lion at My Back”
Director: Tonia Mishiali
Cyprus, Luxembourg, Greece, 2026, 106 min, world premiere
Mariama, an asylum-seeker from Senegal, has simply turned 18. Stella, at first look a withdrawn lady in her 40s, has not too long ago determined to interrupt free from the clutches of dependancy and to provide her life a recent begin. Of their try at discovering their place in a world the place nothing comes without cost, the 2 ladies meet and kind an unexpectedly robust bond. Following her 2018 debut “Pause,” Cyprian producer and director Tonia Mishiali returns to Karlovy Differ with a vivid, heartwarming and hopeful story about how household bonds and motherly love may be present in probably the most unlikely locations.
“Pipes”
Director: Karim Kassem
Lebanon, 2025, 112 min, world premiere
Though Hassan has retired from his job on the water authority, his neighbors are used to him at all times serving to them out. This time, the scenario is severe: Your complete city is with out water, and tensions are rising among the many inhabitants with each passing day. Hassan want to assist all of them, however he additionally wants time to mourn a good friend who not too long ago died below unclear circumstances. Lebanese director Karim Kassem skillfully works with numerous cinematic genres to create a chic double portrait of an ageing man and the city of which he has been a component all his life. He does so with a way of nostalgia, delicate humor, and an virtually meditative melancholy, combined with a contact of detective work.
“Prameň” (Solely Stunning Issues to Look At)
Director: Ivan Ostrochovský
Slovak Republic, Czech Republic, Hungary, 2026, 90 min, world premiere
The movie is about within the mid-Nineteen Eighties, when the state used its legal guidelines to repeatedly affect probably the most intimate sides of its residents’ lives. Ingrid (Aňa Geislerová) is an formidable physician, whose mission is to convey kids into the world, to terminate undesirable pregnancies, and to take part within the sterilization of Romany ladies. The melancholy lady has higher misgivings about her personal scenario than she does about her skilled life, that’s, till she is caught “off guard” by a brand new friendship with a charismatic Romany orderly. Spontaneous Agáta presents to Ingrid the human contours of a nationwide minority diminished by the communists to a demographic drawback. Ostrochovský’s beguiling drama returns to a hitherto unresolved difficulty of Czechoslovak historical past, the place the choice of getting kids was decided by the state.
“Thit-thee Khu” (Fruit Gathering)
Director: Aung Phyoe
Myanmar, France, Czech Republic, 2026, 97 min, world premiere
Seen via the eyes of two younger ladies, life in up to date Myanmar can look fairly oppressive. Working at a textile manufacturing facility in industrial Yangon, they face exhausting work, social repression and financial uncertainty. Though the grueling tempo of on a regular basis life stifles alternatives for human connection, each ladies proceed to dream of intimacy and escape. After they develop nearer, they set in movement the beforehand silenced fibers of their very own feelings. Aung Phyoe’s long-anticipated directorial debut unfolds in shades of silence, delicate gestures and unstated needs. In a fascinating rhythm that oscillates between tenderness and harshness, the movie explores how ladies’s needs survive in a rustic the place intimacy and love between ladies stay socially unacceptable.
PROXIMA COMPETITION
“33 krokov” (33 Steps)
Director: Anna Domček, Šimon Domček
Slovak Republic, Czech Republic, 2026, 71 min, world premiere
13 years after Milan Daniel suffered a severe head damage in a racially motivated assault, his assailant is about to be launched. What emotions does this second awaken in a traumatized man who, although he survived, will endlessly undergo the implications of that fateful day? Straddling the road between fiction and documentary, the characteristic debut by Slovak administrators Šimon and Anna Domček is a mosaic of fragmentary items of on a regular basis life, reminiscences, goals and subjective perceptions. Apart from exploring the expertise of somebody searching for to flee the shadows of the previous – shadows that weigh closely on future generations as nicely – the movie additionally takes an uncommon method to the topic of racial intolerance.
“Camionero” (Truck Driver)
Director: Francisco Marise
Spain, Argentina, 2026, 84 min, world premiere
One would suppose that each highway film wants its central setting: the highway. However Francisco Marise’s hybrid movie senses that each journey, highway or journey requires us to cease now and again. It’s simply such moments, when the movie’s Argentinian truck driver protagonists flip off their engines and cease driving, that kind this movie’s start line. Interweaving intimate observations with delicate glimpses of transcendence, “Truck Driver” paints a collective portrait of people that share a wierd dimension of time inside the silence of the asphalt wilderness – at motels, on the aspect of the highway, and in tire retailers, savoring the pure pleasure of the current second whereas eager for family members far-off.
“Contra la Naturaleza” (In opposition to Nature)
Director: Axel Bertha
Mexico, 2026, 86 min, world premiere
After a few years away, Jonás returns to the countryside to start out work as a stonemason. In a spot marked by the harshness of life, he opens himself as much as one thing intangible – a power that permeates the panorama, our bodies and time itself. An evocatively instructed story of a silent man whose enigmatic nature stems from the darkish aspect of humanity and from his contact with the sacred, the movie strikes alongside the boundary between the bodily and the religious. Thanks to driving sound design, a hypnotic visible fashion, and a rejection of conventional storytelling, Axel Bertha delivers an absorbing cinematic expertise that explores human cruelty as a part of a cycle of destruction from which humanity has but to discover a approach out.
“Enas olokliros anthropos schedon” (A Entire Particular person Virtually)
Director: Efthimis Kosemund-Sanidis
Greece, Bulgaria, Germany, Cyprus, Romania, 2025, 111 min, world premiere
Ilias arrives on a distant island to assert his late father’s inheritance. However the longer he’s pressured to remain on the island, the extra his preliminary indifference begins to fade. As he interacts with the local people, he uncovers his father’s previous and, with it, a portrait of a person which differs considerably from his personal reminiscences. His regularly awakening feelings are intensified by his encounter with the native woman Kalliopi, by sudden spasms in his physique, and by mysterious energy outages that have an effect on your complete island. This feature-length debut paints a young image of a world that’s each actual and mystical – a spot the place, regardless of distant echoes foreboding the attainable finish of the world, we encounter love, reconciliation and sudden understanding.
“Homo Sive Natura”
Director: Giovanni C. Lorusso
Italy, 2026, 115 min, world premiere
Within the distant forests of jap Cambodia lives a neighborhood of indigenous inhabitants. An unnamed 40-year-old businessman arrives with seemingly selfless intentions: he claims he’s merely a vacationer searching for to find the lifetime of his “brothers.” In fact, nonetheless, he’s gathering data for the attainable expropriation of their land. Italian globetrotter Giovanni C. Lorusso lives as much as his fame as a filmmaker balancing on the road between fiction and documentary. By means of distinctive places, mesmerizing digital camera work and immersive sound design, he captures the sluggish interior transformation of his protagonist together with the wealthy cultural and religious lifetime of a neighborhood going through a contemporary type of colonialism.
“The Ink-Stained Hand and the Missing Thumb”
Director: Yashasvi Juyal
India, 2026, 120 min, world premiere
If the world had an edge, it would look one thing just like the distant nook of northern India the place Santosh and Rajji dwell, accumulating freeway tolls in dilapidated cubicles. Work and countless ready are blurred collectively. Sure by the facility of affection, but additionally by the necessity to continuously transfer round seeking work, they dream of the happiness that awaits them in a brand new place… till at some point, a sudden tragedy turns their lives the wrong way up. As melancholic as it’s tender, “The Ink-Stained Hand and the Missing Thumb” is the story of everybody who has suffered an sudden loss. It’s a heartfelt romance bordering on magical realism, a fleeting reminiscence of a cherished one who has vanished into the previous, by no means to return.
“Mein Freund der Pornostar” (My Buddy the Porn Star)
Director: Rosa Friedrich
Austria, 2026, 94 min, world premiere
Rosa – the director Rosa Friedrich herself – was by no means that eager about porn, till her good friend Timo expresses a want to star in an erotic movie. So Rosa agrees to assist him get his challenge off the bottom. Nonetheless, the nearer it will get to the capturing date, the extra Timo feels embarrassed and uncertain about having concerned himself within the first place. His face is finally changed with the assistance of AI, and Rosa, along with a dominatrix, three trans ladies, a food-porn creator, a intercourse coach and different protagonists, continues with the movie. A playful have a look at the form of porn that may be worlds other than the depersonalized, omnipresent trade, the sort which supplies rise to feelings, misgivings and the distinctiveness of every, particular person physique and expertise.
“Milovník, nie bojovník” (Lover, Not a Fighter)
Director: Martina Buchelová
Slovak Republic, 2026, 108 min, world premiere
Andrej desires to cease inflicting bother and begin behaving himself. To spend the summer season serving to his grandmother, and primarily to not drink alcohol – as a result of when he drinks, he does issues like climb a tree from which he can’t get down anymore. However his plan doesn’t rely on him assembly and falling in love with Míša. And generally love is value preventing for, even when it’s alongside your boring cousin Peter. A summer season stuffed with challenges can start. This debut by Slovak director Martina Buchelová is a celebration of cinematic freedom that’s humorous and ingenious when it comes to each fashion and narrative.
“Paris Paris”
Director: Isabelle Tollenaere
Belgium, 2026, 78 min, world premiere
An allegory of looking, loss, displacement and the invention of recent meanings and commonalities. Three males – Yi-En from China, Junior from Congo and Hamzah from Palestine – share a spartan residence in a seemingly deserted constructing in Paris. Apart from this joint dwelling association, the group is sure collectively by their shared expertise of life in exile and the fleeting nature of their possessions, relationships, and sense of house. Director Isabelle Tollenaere’s fiction movie debut is about in one among Europe’s nice cities and in a duplicate of Paris inbuilt China – a metaphor for the immigrants’ outdated dream of life in a brand new house and its gradual transformation into a brand new dream about their outdated house.
“Rain Catcher”
Director: Michele Fiascaris
Italy, United Kingdom, 2026, 109 min, world premiere
On darkish and wet nights, Miles creeps the streets of London, photographing the town’s hidden corners and the folks that populate them. The merchandise of those voyeuristic forays, printed below the pseudonym Rain Catcher, earn him nice renown on social networks and amongst excessive tradition. With time, nonetheless, he begins to note the identical mysterious lady in his images – a lady who follows his each transfer and slowly begins to threaten all his work and his very existence. Michele Fiascaris’s suggestive feature-film debut makes use of his movie’s gloomy environment to discover the town’s underbelly – and the disquieting human thoughts. The viewers is invited to immerse themselves in Miles’s paranoia as he uncovers actuality one step at a time.
“Shokyakuro” (Incinerator)
Director: Shuntaro Uchida
Japan, 2026, 97 min, world premiere
Ten-year-old Kozue, who undoubtedly isn’t one of many fashionable children at college, secretly spends her time tossing numerous objects into the college’s incinerator. When college scholar Jinta involves her classroom and invitations the kids to a shadow play efficiency, one thing awakens inside Kozue, and her path towards maturity begins. On this poetic story primarily based on a brief story by Japanese writer Kaori Ekuni (nicknamed the “female Murakami”), sunny summer season days combine languidly with scenes of on a regular basis life to disclose a silent but unsettling confrontation with a world that always appears impenetrable to kids’s eyes. Understanding household relationships, mortality, and one’s personal feelings is considerably extra sophisticated than turning issues into ash.
“Sitni lopovi” (Petty Thieves)
Director: Mate Ugrin
Croatia, Germany, France, 2026, 106 min, world premiere
It’s summer season, and the vacationer season on the Adriatic is in full swing. Loner Rio earns more money as a kitchen assist at a neighborhood lodge, however he additionally commits minor thefts on the expense of overseas guests. When the younger Serbian employee Andrea learns about his thieving, the 2 come to an uncommon settlement: they’ll steal collectively and share the income. However this pragmatic alliance grows into an sudden closeness. Croatian filmmaker Mate Ugrin’s characteristic debut follows on from a number of distinctive Balkan movies from current years. By means of intelligent metaphors, subtly elliptical enhancing, and an evocative use of environment, “Petty Thieves” paints a portrait of solidarity amongst individuals who by no means cease dreaming of a greater future within the face of a tourism trade that pushes them to the margins.
SPECIAL SCREENINGS
“Bára Basiková” (Bára – Diary of a Rockstar)
Director: Helena Třeštíková
Czech Republic, 2026, 97 min, world premiere
Bára Basiková is an icon of Czech rock and different music genres. To what extent can her public, media-distorted picture differ from the individual she actually is? The reply comes within the type of the most recent long-term documentary examine from Helena Třeštíková, whose empathy, coupled with self-reflection and openness on the a part of the protagonist, offers rise to an enchanting movie portrait: over the course of fifty years we observe a lady who demonstrates outstanding power as she faces the challenges of each her skilled and personal lives.
“Dvě deci tuše” (A Pint of Ink)
Director: Ester Geislerová
Czech Republic, Slovak Republic, 2026, 83 min, world premiere
If the standard of a biographical documentary is measured by its means to instill in viewers beforehand unfamiliar with the topic the need to get to know that individual, then “A Pint of Ink” is a profitable movie. One more reason is that Ester Geislerová, daughter of the Japanologist, translator, journalist, educator and calligrapher Petr Geisler (1949–2009), has managed to seize her father’s distinctive standing in late-Twentieth-century Czech tradition with out shedding sight of the intimate, familial, joyful and painful dimensions. By means of images, house movies, letters and private recollections, she composes a portrait of a charismatic charmer who remained mysteriously elusive even to his closest household.
“Kdyby se holubi proměnili ve zlato” (If Pigeons Turned to Gold)
Director: Pepa Lubojacki
Czech Republic, Slovak Republic, 2026, 110 min
Have you ever ever mourned somebody who continues to be alive? Capturing on her iPhone, director Pepa Lubojacki tries to know why her beloved older brother and two cousins dwell unhoused whereas scuffling with dependancy. Avoiding sentimentality and shot in a DIY aesthetic enriched by the artistic use of stylized remembrances, graphic interventions and synthetic intelligence, this disarmingly private movie explores household historical past, the causes and penalties of dependancy, and the bounds of non-public integrity. What’s the proper expression of affection – to save lots of, or to let go? Winner of the Finest Documentary Award at this yr’s Berlinale.
“Khaneh doost injast” (The Buddy’s Home Is Right here)
Director: Maryam Ataei, Hossein Keshavarz
Iran, U.S., 2025, 96 min, worldwide premiere
Pari and Hanna, roommates and associates, dwell in modern-day Tehran. Pari is a curator and director of an unbiased theater group; Hanna is a dancer, who desires to get out of Iran as quickly as attainable. The scenario of each ladies turns into extra sophisticated, however their friendship is robust within the face of political oppression. “The Friend’s House Is Here” conveys a way of freedom and hope, though it originated below the precise reverse situations. Only a few days after the June Warfare in Iran, the crew, headed by directing duo Hossein Keshavarz and Maryam Ataei, took to the streets of Tehran to make a movie a few technology that not desires to dwell in accordance with imposed guidelines and is striving to realize one of many elementary human rights: the proper to freedom of inventive expression.
“Learning to Breathe Underwater”
Director: Rebekah Fortune
United Kingdom, Netherlands, Eire, 2026, 95 min, world premiere
Eight-year-old Leo lives along with his dad and a large shark, which crashed via the roof of their house. Sure, you learn that appropriately. The shark is Leo’s finest good friend, to whom he can confide all his secrets and techniques. He can’t actually speak to his dad; he should be lacking mum, who’s been gone 5 years now. Then Anya the au pair bursts into their lives, and their world out of the blue adjustments. It’s extra cheerful and Leo discovers that the metallic shark doesn’t must be his solely good friend. A fascinating movie for fogeys and youngsters about learn how to speak collectively and learn how to grieve collectively. About how the world of adults is usually laborious to know, and the way kids’s opinions actually ought to be taken significantly.
“Město otců” (Metropolis of Fathers)
Director: Zdeněk Tyc
Czech Republic, Slovak Republic, Poland, 2026, 100 min, world premiere
Distinctive filmmaker Zdeněk Tyc affords up a narrative a few father and son, who don’t have anything in frequent besides their first identify, Richard, and an residence on a housing property. The burly, good-natured, 30-something manufacturing facility employee listens to heavy metallic and sometimes lets his girlfriend into his life. The frail, retired instructor, who raised the boy after his mom’s departure, is the embodiment of care and understanding. Nonetheless, their tranquil, shared actuality, which embraces each the hardcore band Našrot and Bergman’s “Cries and Whispers,” is disrupted by the sudden demise of the mom. Younger Richard units out on a peculiar initiation journey with weird encounters and moments of sudden enlightenment. Tyc plunges headfirst into existential themes with the reliable assist of a stellar solid headed by Tomáš Vravník and Vladimír Javorský.
“Mistryně” (Every thing as It Ought to Be)
Director: Bohdan Karásek
Czech Republic, 2026, 101 min, world premiere
Monika, a health care provider, is completely happy in her relationship and is anticipating a toddler. She nonetheless will get alongside nicely along with her former husband Petr, and so she decides to inform him about her being pregnant in individual. The 2 of them had had difficulties conceiving. Their afternoon assembly for espresso extends into night, so that they have loads of time to speak – about what might need been, and likewise about what is perhaps. Director, screenwriter and editor Bohdan Karásek pays homage to mumblecore, a style based on conversations. The dialog between the 2 principal characters, portrayed by Marie Švestková and Jiří Havelka, opens quite a few questions confronted by various women and men in center age.
“Morten”
Director: Ivan Pavljutskov
Estonia, Lithuania, 2026, 101 min, world premiere
Youthful fragility and self-discovery are frequent motifs of the up to date coming-of-age style, however few filmmakers additionally tackle social points – and accomplish that in a poetic method or with a religious dimension. Estonian director Ivan Pavljutskov is certainly among the many latter group. In his characteristic debut, 15-year-old photographer Morten finds himself caught between two worlds – between two women, between nature and civilization, between on a regular basis actuality and the paranormal, between what is true and what others need. Because it explores the depths of the Baltic forests and of a younger boy’s soul, “Morten” will appeal viewers of all ages with its heat and understanding for all its characters.
“Robert Richardson: The White Devil”
Director: Jana Hojdová
Czech Republic, U.S., 2026, 105 min, world premiere
Jana Hojdová, a former cinematography scholar at Prague’s FAMU, despatched an e mail with a view to get a contact for Robert Richardson, one of the vital distinguished cinematographers on the scene in the present day. What began as a scholar train and grasp’s diploma challenge quickly advanced right into a artistic partnership and private friendship. The extra unbelievable the movie’s premise appears, the extra fascinated we grow to be by its portrait of a particular and uncompromising artist, three-time Academy Award winner, and acclaimed collaborator of such administrators as Oliver Stone, Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino.
“The Story of Documentary Film – 1980s”
Director: Mark Cousins
United Kingdom, 2026, 120 min, world premiere
After Mark Cousins’ sequence “The Story of Film: An Odyssey” and “Women Make Film,” the storyteller brings us one other saga, this time dedicated to documentary movie. Of his 16 hour-long chapters embracing your complete historical past of documentary, Cousins chosen for Karlovy Differ the half that facilities on the Nineteen Eighties, an period that was elementary for the area from a socio-political perspective.
“To Die to Live”
Director: Yuliia Hontaruk
Ukraine, Latvia, Slovak Republic, 2026, 116 min, world premiere
In 2014, Shakhta, Dancer, and Potter volunteered for the military with a view to battle within the Russo-Ukrainian battle in jap Ukraine. Though the horrible issues they skilled throughout two years on the entrance accompany them for each second of their existence, they attempt to return to civilian life. However the Russian invasion in 2022 forces them to once more confront the struggle. Filmed over the course of 12 years, this documentary makes use of a fragmentary cinematic language to evoke the trauma skilled by its protagonists, and thus to assist us think about the unimaginable: learn how to settle for that some dwell whereas others die, and that – confronted with one’s personal demise – what stays above all is the need to dwell.
“Vyvolený” (Gregorius, the Chosen One)
Director: Tomasz Mielnik
Czech Republic, Poland, Romania, 2026, 90 min, world premiere
“Puppeteer, tell us a story we don’t know yet!” the viewers calls out to a touring thespian. And so he begins to recount a narrative a few boy born of the forbidden love between brother and sister, who had many adventures, who spent 17 years tied to a rock, and who maybe was additionally… a hedgehog? However that’s not as essential as how, after overcoming all these obstacles, he ended up changing into the Pope. Younger Gregorius (portrayed by Jan František Uher) is an enthralling mixture of naivete and willpower, and it’s a pure pleasure to observe his wanderings via legendary lands. Director Tomasz Mielnik’s wild, absurd comedy is predicated on the ultimate novel by Thomas Mann.
“Zpráva pro Minervu 2” (A Report for Minerva 2)
Director: Miroslav Krobot, Lubomír Smékal
Czech Republic, 2026, 69 min, world premiere
The lives of a mismatched group of visitors and workers grow to be entangled in a run-down lodge. Some have come seeking peace and a quick escape from their day by day routine, whereas others lengthy for change – and even love. A lonely clarinetist crosses paths with a younger man on the lookout for a romantic journey, an unhappily married couple, an idiosyncratic lodge workers member, and likewise an alien despatched from the planet Minerva 2 with a view to report on the state of Earth. A mosaic of 14 interwoven tales emerges via fleeting conditions, awkward moments, inside monologues, and quiet observations. This experimental movie by Miroslav Krobot and Lubomír Smékal is loosely primarily based on the stage manufacturing of the identical identify by the S 23 Theatre Firm, whose non-professional actors put collectively stage performances primarily based on the dialogical performing methodology.
