Ben Nicholson
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KVIFF 2023: Our festival highlights
There are few better ways to spend the first weekend of July than roaming between the picturesque pastel-coloured buildings of Karlovy Vary in the Czech Republic, sipping a glass of Becherovka and revelling in the vibrant energy and summery glamour of KVIFF. This year, Russell Crowe was in attendance, opening the festival with a performance…
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Interview: Albert Serra, dir. Pacifiction
Albert Serra is a filmmaker with uncompromising vision. Whether he is reworking Cervantes’ Don Quixote with Honour of the Knights (2006), throwing together Dracula and Casanova in Story of My Death (2013), or depicting the final days of an aging monarch in The Death of Louis XIV (2015), Serra’s singular perspective shines through.
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Interview: Alejandro Loayza Grisi, dir. Utama
Coming from a background in photography and cinematography, Alejandro Loayza Grisi embarked on his directorial career with Utama, the tale of an elderly Quechua couple wrangling llamas in the Bolivian highlands.
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Film Review: Utama
★★★★☆ Alejando Loayza Grisi’s award-winning debut feature, Utama is an understated but spectacularly mounted drama about an ageing Quechua couple tending llamas on the edge of civilisation. They live in a very modest stone house that looks out onto the Bolivian altiplano.
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KVIFF 2022: Our festival highlights
Returning to its traditional early-July slot after two editions disrupted by Covid, the 56th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival felt very much like business as usual. The renovated pool was open and the music was blaring as the festival ran from 1-9 July in the picturesque setting of the chocolate-box Bohemian spa town.
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Game Review: The Complex
★★★☆☆ Fans of text adventures and the sadly defunct Telltale Games series can get their latest fill of branching narratives and choosing their own storyline courtesy of the new interactive sci-fi film, The Complex. “Here is a brand new idea in fiction – a story which ends in any one of a dozen or more…
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Interview: Pedro Costa, dir. Vitalina Varela
Since his 1997 feature Ossos began his work with the disadvantaged communities of Fontainhas in Lisbon, Pedro Costa has become one of cinema’s most singular voices on the dispossessed.
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KVIFF 2019: Our festival highlights
The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival returned to Bohemia this year with another feast of cinema from Europe and beyond. Running from 29 June to 7 July, this year’s festival was notable for two excellent retrospective strands to complement their competitive programmes, including the always interesting East of West Competition.
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Film Review: Shirkers
★★★★☆ Sandi Tan’s luminous and shape-shifting documentary Shirkers is a journey back in time through the 16mm reels and sinister true story of the long-lost indie movie of the same name that she shot in Singapore over 25 years ago. It’s kind of fitting that this film lands on Netflix just prior to Halloween. A…
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Film Review: Christopher Robin
★★★☆☆ Ideally, Disney would stop updating beloved cartoon classics into new live-action films, but as that seems unlikely, it’s lucky the Marc Forster-directed Christopher Robin has enough charm to get by. Over the past few years, Disney has doubled-down on the live-action remake gravy train. Despite Tim Burton’s regrettable sojourns into Wonderland and the intermittently exciting…