What other place can you see the biggest films from Cannes intermingled with ruminative Eastern European stories that eloquently tell the history of the people and the region? Here, the theaters—a mixture of splendid venues like Grand and Small Hall and intimate, seemingly makeshift cinemas like Husovka—are always packed. Audiences want to see the movies, no matter the size of their profile, so badly, they’ll sit on the floor and on the steps of the stairs to take in those flickering journeys. Usually the weather is fantastic (this year’s abnormally rainy festival didn’t quash anyone’s spirit) and the verdant mountainous vistas are postcards brought to life.
This was my third year visiting KVIFF, a festival I appreciate because of the modest works it champions that few across the pond will care to know but have significant importance for the health of the entire cinematic ecosystem. There, cinemas are not dying and audiences seem to grow every year—a dream experienced in a warm cocoon.
This year, the festival’s 58th—its 30th helmed by Festival President Jiří Bartoška—was as much a look back as it was a step forward. The opening ceremony, which always features a show stopping centerpiece performance (last year there were figure skaters gliding across the stage) paid homage to the fest’s previous thirty years by combining bits of all the past productions, filling the stage with an alien, a synchronized swimmer, a dancer dressed in a vintage peach 1970s suit, and a scream queen chased by a slasher. The films themselves were just as varied.
Among the dozen films in the main Crystal Globe competition were anti-fascism stories (“Panopticon,” “Celebration,” and “The Hungarian Dressmaker”), films about crumbling marriages (“Loveable,” “Rude to Love,” and “Tiny Lights”), estranged families (“Three Days of Fish,” “Pierce,” and “Our Lovely Pig Slaughter”), refugees (“Xoftex”), enslavement (“Banzo”), and a woman artist you should know (“A Sudden Glimpse to Deeper Things”) hailing from countries like Georgia, the USA, the Netherlands, Japan, the Czech Republic, and more.