Karlovy Vary
Report 2004 Festival Homepage
39th International Film Festival Karlovy Vary
July 2-10, 2004
Ecumenical Award
The prize of the Ecumenical Jury at the International Film Festival Karlovy Vary 2004 went to the film
Cavedweller, USA 2004, directed by Lisa Cholodenko.
The Jury has awarded this film for the convincing interpretation of the necessity to cope bravely, wisely, and with humour with the consequences of one's own failures and those of others and of the fundamental need of finding inner peace and mutual forgiveness.
Synopsis:
Delia is a nervy, sensitive middle-aged woman who doesn’t seem to have had much joy out of life. Years before, she had run away from a man who used to beat her and had threatened to kill her several times; her second marriage to a rock singer ended with his death in a car accident while he was travelling with his lover. There is not much now to keep her in California and, taking her reluctant 11-year-old daughter Cissy with her, she decides to return home to Georgia. But nothing is ever that easy. Many years ago Delia had abandoned her two small daughters and now she has to encounter contempt from the inhabitants of the provincial town, accusations from her husband who, gravely ill and abandoned, is dying in his dilapidated house, the hatred of her mother-in-law who is bringing up the girls and doesn’t want to hand them back to Delia, with Cissy’s depression as the girl can’t stand the new environment and, above all, she has to face total alienation and lack of trust on the part of her two adolescent daughters. (Festival Information)
Members of the Jury:
Juraj Drobny (Slovakia) - chairman
Jan Elias (Czech Republic)
Michael Otrisal (Czech Republic)
Anita Uzulniece (Latvia)
Bojidar Manov (Bulgaria)
Hilde Van Liempt (Belgium)
Honorary Award to Eva Zaoralová
 At the Ecumenical Reception, the artistic director of the festival, Eva Zaoralová, has been honoured by the church film organisations INTERFILM and SIGNIS. Hans Hodel, president of INTERFILM, and SIGNIS representative Guido Convents handed over to Mrs. Zaoralová an Honorary Medal for her artistic commitment, the quality of the festival programme and the support of the Ecumenical Jury throughout the years. The Ecumenical Jury of the International Film Festival Karlovy Vary has been established in 1994.
Above: INTERFILM president Hans Hodel presents the Honorary Medal to Eva Zaoralová
39th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival
Report by Ron Holloway, GEP/Interfilm, 31 July 2004
For the Czech media the 39th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (2-10 July 2004) was something of a sensation. Vaclav Havel, the country’s ex-president and most popular political figure, was on hand for the official opening to receive a moving standing ovation. Later, Vaclav Klaus, the current Czech president, also showed for the closing ceremonies. To add to the festivities, Miroslav Ondricek, Milos Forman’s ace cameraman (Oscar Nominations for Amadeus and Ragtime) was honored with an Award for Outstanding Artistic Contribution to World Cinema (together with Harvey Keitel and Roman Polanski). The Prize of the Karlovy Vary Region was given for the first time to Jiri Bartoska, the festival codirector. And the Ecumenical Jury honored Eva Zaoralova, the festival’s artistic director, an Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.
For the second time in a row, the Crystal Globe, KVIFF’s Grand Prix, was awarded to an Italian film: Certi bambini (A Children’s Story), directed by Andrea and Antonio Frazzi. The Frazzi brothers thus join the Italian Tavianis (Paolo and Vittorio), the Belgian Dardennes (Luc and Jean-Pierre), and the American Coens (Ethan and Joel) as yet another fraternal directorial team. Specializing in the children-and-youth film, their The Sky Will Fall (1999) was awarded the Special Jury Prize at the Giffoni Children’s Film Festival. In A Children’s Story, based on a novel by Diego Da Silva, who coscripted the film, the focus is on 11-year-old Rosario (Arturo Paglia), who lives with an ailing grandmother but prefers to roam the streets of Naples with friends – smoking, sniffing, drinking, stealing. To their credit, the Frazzis don’t exploit the lurid side of the theme, as Larry Clark did in Kids and Ken Park. Rather, A Children’s Story comes across as a sad, rather melancholic statement about youngsters who have unfortunately already consumed most of their lives before even reaching their teens. One has the feeling, too, that the film is a directorial salute to a neorealist classic in Italian cinema: Vittorio de Sica’s The Children Are Watching Us (1943), the first time of his many collaborations with screenwriter Cesare Zavattini.
Films about youth were the core of a rather weak KVIFF competition lineup. Indeed, nearly all of the prizes awarded by the international jury went in this direction. In Xavier Bermudez’s León y Olvida (León and Olvida) (Spain), awarded the Best Director Prize, a 20-year-old boy with Down’s Syndrome refuses to live in an institution upon the death of his mother and thus places a heavy burden upon his older sister. Marta Larralde as Olvida, the long-suffering sister, well deserved her share of the Best Actress Award. The Best Actor Award went to Max Riemelt for his performance in Dennis Gansel’s Napola (Germany), the story of a 17-year-old Berlin youth from a working-man’s family whose passion for boxing gains him entrance in 1942 to an elite Nazi school (NAPOLA – Nationalpolitische Erziehungsanstalt). There he makes friends with the sensitive son of a Nazi leader, whose tragic fate opens his eyes to his loss of freedom and self-esteem in the regimented school. In Zrinko Agresta’s Tu (Here) (Croatia/Bosnia-Herzegovina), awarded the Special Jury Prize, the Croatian director links six individual stories around the fate of a mentally disadvantaged youth from a village devastated at the outbreak of the Yugoslav War. And in Christophe Barratier’s Les choristes (Chorists) (France/Switzerland), the return of a famous conductor to attend the funeral of his mother triggers memories of a talented music teacher at a boarding school for unmanageable boys during the postwar years. Using methods to tame wild souls, the choral teacher has to contend with a devil with an angel’s voice.
As to be expected, the 39th KVIFF highlighted the current revival of cinematographies in ex-socialist countries. Valery Todorovsky’s Moj svodnyj brat Frankenstejn (My Step-Brother Frankenstein) (Russia), awarded the FIPRESCI (International Critics) Prize, takes the pulse of a troubled Moscow in the wake of the war in Chechnya when a war veteran appears suddenly on the scene to upset a physicist’s complacent family life. Vinko Bresan’s Svjedoci (Witnesses) (Croatia), awarded the prestigious Philip Morris Prize in the East of the West section, chronicles contrasting and contradictory viewpoints about the murder of a Serb in a Croatian village in a what-is-truth Rashomon context. Indeed, the East of the West section was packed to the brim with outstanding entries, many of which had already been awarded and cited at major international film festivals: Marina Razbezhkina’s Vremja shatvy (Reaping the Harvest) (Russia), Guka Omarova’s Shizza (Schizo) (Kazakhstan/Russia/France/Germany), Alexei Gherman Jr’s Poslednyj Pojezd (The Last Train) (Russia), Nariman Turebajev’s Malenkie Ljudi (Little Men) (Kazakhstan/France), Sinisa Dragin’s Faraonul (Pharaoh) (Romania), Krasimir Krumov’s Pod edno nebe (Under the Same Sky) (Bulgaria), and Kako ubiv svetec (How I Killed a Saint) (Macedonia/Slovenia/France).
Two Eastern films by students at film schools were popular hits in other sections. Die Geschichte vom weinenden Kamel (The Story of the Weeping Camel (Mongolia/Germany) by Byambasuren Davaa and Luigi Falorni, graduates of the Munich Film School, was programmed in the Another View section and voted the Pravo Audience Prize. Set on the steppes of Mongolia, this warm-hearted story of how musicians coax a mother camel to allow her newly born offspring to suckle for milk. And Vit Klusak and Filip Remunda, graduates of the Prague Film School (FAMU) hit the jackpot with their documentary Ceshy sen (Czech Dream), programmed in the Czech Film 2003-2004 section. Czech Dream documents in uproarious fashion the marketing of a consumer hoax. For two weeks in May of 2003 the people of Prague were saturated with advertising for the opening of a “hypermarket for better life” super-store for eager-beaver shoppers. And, of course, 5000 people showed up on an open field before a huge façade dominated by a “Czech Dream” logo, some arriving at dawn with camping-chairs to be the first in line for the grand opening. A delight to watch as the hoax unfolds, Czech Dream also provoked not only pro-and-contra opinion in the media, but it was also discussed in the Czech Parliament!
Karlovy Vary 2004 was also the scene of a festival contretemps with FIAPF (International Federation of Film Producers Associations), the organization in charge of competition regulations for member festivals. According to one media account, when Karlovy Vary invited Metod Pevec’s Pod njenim oknom (Beneath Her Window) (Slovenia) to participate in the competition, FIAPF was informed well in advance of the decision, and FIAPF gave its approval. Later, smack in the middle of the Karlovy Vary festival, that permission was withdrawn by FIAPF’s Bertrand Mollier on the grounds that Beneath Her Window had already participated in the Kingfisher Competition in the Slovenian capital at the Ljubljana International Film Festival last November. Accordingly, Eva Zaoralova dropped the film from the Karlovy Vary competition – only to have the film’s producer, Danijel Hocevar, send a complaint through the Slovenian Producers Association to the FIAPF headquarters on the grounds that Slovenian producers have every right to program their own films in their own national festival – a rule, that FIAPF traditionally honors. Mollier, now in the middle of the affair, reportedly responded that his “decision” was only a “recommendation” – and nothing more. In that case, why would FIAPF even bother to stir the waters of controversy right in the middle of one of the world’s most respected film festivals? As one FIPRESCI critic remarked, the letters of FIAPF should now stand for “Festival Institution for Asinine Protection of Favorites” – meaning that Karlovy Vary may have become a bit too “competitive” for other festival members with more pull at the FIAPF headquarters.
AWARDS
INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION
Crystal Globe - Grand Prix: Certi bambini (A Children’s Story) (Italy), Andrea and Antonio Frazzi
Special Jury Prize: Tu (Here) (Croatia/Bosnia-Herzegovina), Zrinko Ogresta
Best Director: Xavier Bermudez, León y Olvida (León and Olvida) (Spain)
Best Actress (ex aequo)
Karen-Lisa Mynster, Lad de små børn (Aftermath) (Denmark), dir Paprika Steen
Marta Larralde, León y Olvida (León and Olvida) (Spain), dir Xavier Bermudez
Best Actor: Max Riemelt, Napola (Germany), dir Dennis Gansel
DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION
Best Documentary Film: Svadba tishiny (Wedding of Silence) (Russia), Pavel Medvedev
Special Mention:
Untertage (Days Under) (Netherlands), Jiska Rickels
Niceho nelituji (No Regrets) (Czech Republic), Theodora Remundova
Awards for Outstanding Artistic Contribution to World Cinema
Harvey Keitel (USA), Miroslav Ondricek (Czech Republic), Roman Polanski (France/Poland)
Prize of Town of Karlovy Vary
Jacqueline Bisset (USA)
Prize of Karlovy Vary Region
Jiri Bartoska (Czech Republic)
Philip Morris Film Award (250,000 CZK)
Svjedoci (Witnesses) (Croatia), Vinko Bresan
Ecumenical Prize
Cavedweller (USA), Lisa Cholodenko
Ecumenical Jury Award for Outstanding Contribution to KVIFF
Eva Zaoralova (Czech Republic)
International Critics (FIPRESCI) Prize
Moj svodnyj brat Frankenstejn (My Step-Brother Frankenstein) (Russia), Valery Todorovsky
Don Quixote Prize (FICC – International Federation of Film Clubs)
Kenar-e roodkhaneh (Riverside) (Iran), Ali-Reza Amini
Special Mention
Lad de små børn (Aftermath) (Denmark), Paprika Steen
Pravo Audience Prize
Die Geschichte vom weinenden Kamel (The Story of the Weeping Camel) (Germany/Mongolia), Byambasuren Davaa, Luigi Falorni
Czech Television Award – Independent Camera Prize
Best Film in Forum of Independents
Dandelion (USA), Mark Milgard
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(Extraits)
