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Festival coverage

Karlovy Vary International Film Festival

28 June – 6 July 2024

The Czech film festival is back with a great selection of films both national and international. Take a look at our coverage so far.

Other years (14)

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Latest reviews

  • The Balconettes
    Review preview for The Balconettes

    The film is a brash, vulgar, joyously realistic portrait of a three-way friendship with roots that run deep.

    Jennie Kermode · 5 out of 5
    Three women get stuck in a Marseille apartment during a heatwave.
  • Trans Memoria
    Review preview for Trans Memoria

    While Verseau talks about how crucial the surgery was to her mental health, the complexity of the emotions experienced afterwards is also made clear.

    Amber Wilkinson · 3.5 out of 5
    An intimate documentary diary, which sees the director return to Thailand and to the year 2012, when she underwent gender-affirming surgery.
  • No Other Land
    Review preview for No Other Land

    No Other Land brings humanity and particularity to a topic that is too often discussed in the abstract.

    Jennie Kermode · 4.5 out of 5
    This film made by a Palestinian-Israeli collective shows the destruction of the West Bank’s Masafer Yatta by Israeli authorities and the unlikely alliance which develops between the Palestinian activist Basel and Israeli journalist Yuval.
  • The Girl With The Needle
    Review preview for The Girl With The Needle

    Illusions are everywhere in this film.

    Jennie Kermode · 4.5 out of 5
    In Copenhagen in the aftermath of World War one, a young woman in desperate circumstances takes on a job which will lead her to still greater depths of despair.
  • On Becoming A Guinea Fowl
    Review preview for On Becoming A Guinea Fowl

    Nyoni expertly controls her narrative so that it glides effortlessly between the reality of the funeral preparations to the more surreal psychological trauma Shula is working through.

    Amber Wilkinson · 4 out of 5
    Absurdist drama sees family secrets gradually revealed during the preparations for a funeral.
  • Porcelain War
    Review preview for Porcelain War

    A tactile and colour-infused film.

    Amber Wilkinson · 3.5 out of 5
    Under roaring fighter jets and missile strikes, Ukrainian artists Slava, Anya, and Andrey choose to stay behind and fight, contending with the soldiers they have become. Defiantly finding beauty amid destruction, they show that although it’s easy to make people afraid, it’s hard to destroy their passion for living.
  • Santosh
    Review preview for Santosh

    Writer/director Sandhya Suri - who has a documentary background - is keen to show that everyone plays their part in the prejudices and corruption of the legal system.

    Amber Wilkinson · 4 out of 5
    Newly widowed Santosh inherits her husband’s job as a police constable in the rural badlands of Northern India. When a low caste girl is found raped and murdered, she is pulled into the investigation under the wing of charismatic feminist inspector Sharma.
  • Kneecap
    Review preview for Kneecap

    It's got the musicality that proper swearing should.

    Andrew Robertson · 4 out of 5
    There are 80,000 native Irish speakers in Ireland. 6,000 live in the North of Ireland. Three of them became a rap group called Kneecap. This anarchic Belfast trio becomes the unlikely figurehead of a civil rights movement to save the mother tongue.
  • My Favourite Cake
    Review preview for My Favourite Cake

    While many other films feel as though they are really staking out a deliberate political stance against the Iranian regime or coming at it from deep within metaphor, My Favourite Cake is casually, but almost constantly, rebellious in small ways.

    Amber Wilkinson · 4 out of 5
    A 70-year-old decides to break her solitary routine and revitalise her love life.
  • Hunting Daze
    Review preview for Hunting Daze

    Condensed and symbolic in its approach, sometimes to the point where it becomes surreal, Hunting Daze uses a small story to address big subjects.

    Jennie Kermode · 4.5 out of 5
    A young, tempestuous woman, is taken in by a group of hunters in a remote cabin. In the midst of this tough, yet endearing, male microsociety, she feels like she finally belongs. A mysterious stranger’s arrival disrupts her newfound haven.

A–Z of Karlovy Vary International Film Festival 2024 reviews

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