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Karlovy Vary International Film Festival · 2019

Karlovy Vary International Film Festival 2019

Documentary Competition

Programme

10 films · 2 reviews

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17 Blocks

Review preview for 17 Blocks

There's a searing honesty and immediacy about the footage.

Amber Wilkinson · 4 out of 5
Using two decades of intimate home video, 17 Blocks tells the story of the Sanford family, whose struggles with addiction and gun violence eventually lead to a journey of love, loss, and acceptance.

(Country: US; Year: 2019; Director: Davy Rothbart; Writer: Jennifer Tiexiera)

Full review See: Davy Rothbart on the challenges of making 17 Blocks

European premiere

Confucian Dream (Kongzi meng)

The story of a mother looking for the right kind of alternative education that will take into account her son’s moral development.

(Country: China, US; Year: 2019; Director: Mijie LI)

European premiere

The Fading Village (Chun Qu Dong Lai)

The urbanisation of China has meant that remote 300-year-old village Blackwater GE Village now has a population of 16, with only one young man still there. This documentary considers the social change.

(Country: China; Year: 2019; Director: Feifang Liu)

World premiere

Immortal (Surematu)

How do the mechanisms of political power directly influence the lives of a country’s inhabitants? In seeking an answer to this difficult question, this cinematic essay looks at everyday life in a small Russian industrial city, uncovering along the way how dangerous and furtive an all-permeating ideology can be.

(Country: Estonia, Latvia; Year: 2019; Director: Ksenia Okhapkina)

World premiere

In The Arms Of Morpheus (In de armen van Morpheus)

What happens behind closed eyes when we lose consciousness and give ourselves over to dreams?

(Country: Netherlands; Year: 2019; Director: Marc Schmidt; Writer: Aaron McDowell; Stars: Riley DeLuca, Mackenzie Hack, Riley DeLuca, Mackenzie Hack)

World premiere

The Last Autumn (Síðasta haustið)

Review preview for The Last Autumn

The film has an organic quality, seeming like another product of the land.

Jennie Kermode · 3.5 out of 5
It's autumn at Krossnes in Árneshreppur, an isolated part of north Iceland, and Úlfar and Oddný are facing their last autumn as farmers.

(Country: Iceland; Year: 2019; Director: Yrsa Roca Fannberg)

Full review

World premiere

Over The Hills

Father and son Vít and Grisha travel to Russia to visit the boy’s mother and sister. Why did their previously harmonious family split in two?

(Country: Czech Republic; Year: 2019; Director: Martin Mareček)

World premiere

Projectionist (Panorama)

Valentin is over sixty and has spent more than forty years working at Kiev’s oldest cinema. You don’t have to twist his arm to go out drinking and dancing – the eccentric man simply ignores his age. But as with everyone else, life puts new obstacles in his way that he must overcome.

(Country: Poland; Year: 2019; Director: Yuriy Shylov)

World premiere

Spoon

A portrait of the paradoxical contradiction between the long production process and short lifespan of an ordinary piece of plastic.

(Country: Latvia, Norway, Lithuania; Year: 2019; Director: Laila Pakalnina)

World premiere

Up To Down

Documentary set on the outskirts of Naples, where the marginalised live.

(Country: Italy; Year: 2019; Director: Nazareno Manuel Nicoletti)

World premiere