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Festival coverage

Karlovy Vary International Film Festival

30 June – 8 July 2023

In Camera is in the Proxima competition
In Camera is in the Proxima competition

This year's festival will run from June 30 to July 8. The festival will open with Firebrand. The programme is in progress of being announced, so please check back regularly.

Other years (14)

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Latest reviews

  • Animalia
    Review preview for Animalia

    Pregnancy is often depicted as a state of enhanced vulnerability, and one which points the way to increased dependency. Here, Alaoui turns that around.

    Jennie Kermode · 4.5 out of 5
    A young, pregnant woman finds emancipation as aliens land in Morocco.
  • Sorcery
    Review preview for Sorcery

    Part fantasy, part western, the film is exquisitely shot, the humid atmosphere of the island creating a degree of visual uncertainty to confound viewers further.

    Jennie Kermode · 4.5 out of 5
    On the remote island of Chiloé in the late 19th century, an indigenous girl named Rosa lives and works with her father on a farm. When the foreman brutally turns on Rosa’s father, she sets out for justice, seeking help from the king of a powerful organisation of sorcerers.
  • Goodbye Julia
    Review preview for Goodbye Julia

    Kordofani uses the greater intimacy offered by the camera to bring us close to the characters and reveal the complex layers of relationship developing between them.

    Jennie Kermode · 4.5 out of 5
    Wracked by guilt after covering up a murder, Mona — a northern Sudanese retired singer in a tense marriage — tries to make amends by taking in the deceased’s southern Sudanese widow, Julia, and her son, Daniel, into her home.
  • Orlando, My Political Biography
    Review preview for Orlando, My Political Biography

    Capturing the experience of living in a world where one’s gender doesn’t fit better than almost any other film to date, Preciado’s work is all about claiming space and present day narrative.

    Jennie Kermode · 4.5 out of 5
    Docufiction interpretation of Virginia Woolf's novel.
  • Omen
    Review preview for Omen

    The powerful forces of family and fable, old and new, intertwine and vie for supremacy in Belgian-Congolese director Baloji’s visually striking debut.

    Amber Wilkinson · 4 out of 5
    When a man who was cast out as a child after being considered a sorceror returns home, he faces prejudice.
  • Blaga's Lessons
    Review preview for Blaga's Lessons

    Beneath the intense lead performance and the minimalist but effective camera work, there is a rigid moral waiting to be unearthed.

    Sergiu Inizian · 2.5 out of 5
    A woman's moral compass starts to slip after she is conned out of her savings by a phone scammer.
  • Opponent
    Review preview for Opponent

    It’s a tremendously challenging role, in which Maadi excels.

    Jennie Kermode · 4.5 out of 5
    Iman, an Iranian, lives with his family in Sweden in an ever-changing succession of refugee hostels. To increase his chances of obtaining residence permits for them all, he resumes his career as a wrestler – and is confronted with the reason he had to flee.
  • La Chimera
    Review preview for La Chimera

    Rohrwacher’s visually eclectic style is well suited to exploring the contrasts between present and past, natural and artificial, poverty and wealth.

    Jennie Kermode · 2.5 out of 5
    The story of a group of archaeologists and the black market in historical artefacts.
  • Samsara
    Review preview for Samsara

    While attempting to describe the crux of Samsara is, essentially, as impossible as catching lightning in a jar, join me on a journey of imagination and we’ll give it a go.

    Amber Wilkinson · 4.5 out of 5
    Samsara is the Buddhist cycle of death and reincarnation. From the temples of Laos, alongside with teenage monks, we will accompany a soul in its transit from one body to another through the bardo.
  • Monster
    Review preview for Monster

    A beautifully constructed piece of work in which every detail serves the whole, putting the tools of the epic at the disposal of a story which is intimate and delicately realised.

    Jennie Kermode · 4.5 out of 5
    A mother is shocked when she learns what a teacher has said to her son, but the truth is more complicated.

A–Z of Karlovy Vary International Film Festival 2023 reviews

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