Karlovy Vary International Film Festival announced its winners on July 12 during its closing ceremony. More than 128,000 tickets were sold for 465 screenings of 108 features, 23 documentaries, and 44 shorts. The festival is key in the year’s film circuit, nestled between Cannes and Venice.
The 59th outing, held from July 4-12, gave out its top honor, the Grand Prix — Crystal Globe, to director Miro Remo’s “Better Go Mad in the Wild” from Czech Republic and Slovak Republic. The filmmakers — producers included — received $25,000.
“A funny valentine to the fading art of being true to yourself, Miro Remo’s delightfully inventive documentary is a portrait of bickering twin brothers who may live a weird, off-grid life on their dilapidated farm but who, in a world as mad as ours, actually might be the sanest people on earth,” the Crystal Globe jury, which consisted of Nicolas Celis, Babak Jalali, Jessica Kiang, Jiří Mádl, and Tuva Novotny, wrote in a statement that the film. “In the lifestyle it portrays but also in the filmmaking risks it takes and the raucously loving brotherhood it admires, ‘Better Go Mad in the Wild’ feels like a gulp of fresh, woody air, or a quick dip in an outdoor pond, or a moment of contemplation as a cow chews on your beard. In short, it feels like being free.”
A Special Jury Prize, which came with a $15,000 prize, was awarded to Iran’s “Bidad,” directed by Soheil Beiraghi. “Mirroring the bravery it takes to make such a film in Iran, writer-director Soheil Beiraghi’s ‘Bidad’ is just as courageous in its constantly unexpected narrative turns, as it careens through different genre terrains as energetically as it rolls through the different suburbs of Tehran,” the jury wrote. “Morphing from social-injustice thriller into family melodrama into a triumph-over-adversity arc, it is most striking as a gonzo lovers-on-the-run romance, shot through with punk energy and spiky personality that ends on an ambivalent yet optimistic note — because where there’s this much life, there’s hope.”
The Best Director Awards went to Vytautas Katkus for “The Visitor” from Lithuania, Norway, and Sweden, and Nathan Ambrosioni for “Out of Love” from France. Pia Tjelta won Best Actress for Norway’s “Don’t Call Me Mama,” directed by Nina Knag, while Àlex Brendemühl won Best Actor for Spain’s “When a River Becomes the Sea,” directed by Pere Vilà Barceló. Kateřina Falbrová’s role in the Czech Republic and Slovak Republic film “Broken Voices” was given a Special Jury Mention.
The Právo Audience Award was given to “We’ve Got to Frame It! (a conversation with Jiří Bartoška in July 21),” directed by Milan Kuchynka and Jakub Jurásek from the Czech Republic.
For Karlovy Vary’s Proxima competition, the jury consisted of Yulia Evina Bhara, Noaz Deshe, Nelson Carlos De Los Santos Arias, and Marissa Frobes. The Proxima Grand Prix, worth $15,000, was given to “Sand City” from Bangladesh, directed by Mahde Hasan. Wrote the jury, “A realm unknown, where architecture breathes and silence screams. Time drips sideways in this fractured hourglass, and color spills like memory. In ‘Sand City,’ cinema becomes a trembling map of the strange, abandoned, and intimate at the edge of sense.”
They also awarded a Special Jury Prize worth $10,000 to Colombia’s “Forensics.” “For years, streaming giants have commodified Latin American stories of violence and have transformed them into consumable drama,” their assessment wrote. “Colombia and Mexico have become epicenters in a cynical economy built on pain, death, and disappearance. That’s why we honor cinema that resists — small, imperfect, but brave. Films that decolonize the gaze and propose new paradigms, because the old ones justify colonial narratives and systems of exclusion, whose consequences are bodies silenced, erased, and disappeared into the void of war — never to return. This award goes to a film that carries forward the tradition of swimming against the current of globalized violence — with truth, with ethics, and above all, with poetry.”
The judges gave a special menton to “Before / After,” directed by Manoël Dupont from Belgium, writing, “Sometimes a film comes along that surprises you — not with spectacle, but with honesty. ‘Before / After’ is one of those rare stories: simple, odd, and deeply human. What begins the dream of a hair transplant in Turkey becomes a tender road movie and a fleeting love story without labels. We celebrate its warmth, its humility with a voice that makes us laugh and feel.”
The Crystal Globe for Outstanding Artistic Contribution was given to storied Swedish star Stellan Skarsgård. Jiří Brožek won the Festival President’s Award for Contribution to Czech Cinematography. Vicky Krieps, Dakota Johnson, and Peter Sarsgaard were honored with the Festival President’s Award.
“This looks like Disneyland. It’s crazy here. It’s so beautiful,” Johnson told reporters last week. “And I just couldn’t feel more grateful.”
The Ecumenical Jury Awards’ Grand Prize went to “Rebuilding,” United States, directed by Max Walker Silverman, and the jury’s Commendation went to “Cinema Jazireh,” Turkey, Iran, Bulgaria, and Romania, directed by Gözde Kural. The Europa Cinemas Label Award jury chose for its prize “Broken Voices,” from the Czech Republic and Slovak Republic, directed by Ondřej Provazník.
The FIPRESCI Awards, which chose the best films in both the Crystal Globe and Proxima competitions, were decided by Helen Barlow, Ela Bittencourt, Bitopan Borborah, Patrick Fey, Lukáš Jirsa, and Christos Skyllakos. This year they chose “Out of Love,” directed by Nathan Ambrosioni from France, and “Before/After,” from Belgium, directed by Manoël Dupont.
Other awards included the KVIFF Eastern Promises winners, which awarded a Midpoint Development Award to David Gašo’s “History of Illness” from Croatia. The Eurimages Co-Production Development Awards went to “Battalion Records” from Romania and director Ștefan Bîtu-Tudoran and “In Vacuo,” from Ukraine/Germany and director Yelizaveta Smith.
The Connecting Cottbus Award went to Poland’s “RadioAmator,” directed by Tomasz Habowski. The Rotterdam Lab Award was given to “Restless” producer Ondřej Lukeš of Czech Republic. The Marché du Film Producers Network Award was given to “Soyboy” producer Michelle Brøndum Hauerbach of Great Britain and producer Genovéva Petrovits for Hungary, Czech Republic, and Germany’s “Democracy: Work in Progress.”
KVIFF also picked six from a submitted 200 projects — three film and three television series concepts — for its Works in Development programs, which provides Czech creators to get their projects in front of professionals. Winners included director/animator Daria Kascheeva for “Nameless,” director Tomáš Klein for “Spirit Moose,” director Greta Stocklassa “Burnout,” director/animator Philippe Kastner for “Mould,” director Dužan Duong for “Lost Boys,” and director Kateřina Letáková for “Remake.” KVIFF also honored director István Kovács’ “A Siege” from Hungary, a presentation to a guest project from a Hungarian counterpart program.
The 60th Karlovy Vary IFF is set for July 3-11, 2026.
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