A celebratory Karlovy Vary International Film Festival revealed its competition lineups on Tuesday. The 60th edition, which will commemorate the 80-year anniversary of the festival’s founding, features a dozen world premieres competing for the Crystal Globe and another dozen films bowing in Proxima–including cinema hailing from Colombia and Myanmar.
The Czech fest, located in a picturesque spa town just outside of Prague, also unveiled competition juries, including Pulitzer Prize winner and The New Yorker film critic Justin Chang and two-time Oscar nominee Eskil Vogt (“The Worst Person in the World” and “Sentimental Value“). KVIFF runs July 3-11.
Some of the major highlights of the Crystal Globe competition this year starts with Bulgarian filmmaker Petar Valchanov’s “Black Money for White.” The director’s newest film—he previously co-helmed the Maria Bakalova-starrer “Triumph”—concerns an elderly couple whose dreams of traveling to St. Petersburg to witness the White Nights are upended by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “3 Weeks After” by Serbian director Miroslav Terzić also has ties to Bulgaria: It follows a group of students traveling to the country whose adolescent angst floods to the surface when their bus breaks down.
Colombia also makes an appearance at the festival with Esteban Hoyos García and Juan Miguel Gelacio Ramírez’s “Five Years, Four Months,” an aching work about a mother making one last bid to find the remains of her long missing son. Joining Colombia is Chile, with Valeria Sarmiento’s “Behind the Rain.” Sarmiento, the esteemed editor behind “City of Pirates” and “Mysteries of Lisbon,” arrives with a film about a psychology graduate coming home to Valdivia only to discover a young girl’s body. The unearthing shakes open traumatic childhood memories.
Aung Phyoe’s “Fruit Gathering,” which comes from Myanmar, expands the fest’s reach. It concerns two young women employed at a textile factory in Yangon where they face exploitation, social repression, and economic disparity. A romance based in quiet rhythms, it may well be one of more festivals premiering in the resplendent Czech town.
The Proxima competition, a vertical of the festival that grants space to emerging auteurs, is led by an equally geographically eclectic array of films. Indian director Yashasvi Juyal arrives with the most evocatively titled film: “The Ink-Stained Hand and the Missing Thumb.” The picture follows two men working in broken down toll booths in search of an increasingly rare kind of happiness.
Alex Bertha’s “After Nature” is a Mexico-set story about a man returning to the countryside to be a stonemason. The plot summary to Bertha’s film describes it as, “An evocatively told story of a silent man whose enigmatic nature stems from the dark side of humanity and from his contact with the sacred, the film moves along the boundary between the physical and the spiritual.” Conversely, Japanese Shuntaro Uchida’s “Incinerator,” an adaptation of Kaori Ekuni’s short story, bills itself as a ruminative coming of age story about learning about mortality and family relationships.
Accompanying these competition movies are special screenings, including Maryam Ataei and Hossein Keshavarz’s defiant Tehran-set Sundance political stunner “The Friend’s House is Here” and “The Story of Documentary Film – 1980s” from former Crystal Globe winner Mark Cousins. His epic chronicling of the history of documentary is split into sixteen one-hour parts: the section, which focused on the 1970s, premiered at this most recent Cannes. The second part, about the 1980s, bows at KVIFF.
Along with these films, are also eleven other works ranging in topics from a portrait of three-time Oscar winning cinematographer Robert Richardson called “Robert Richardson: The White Devil” to an adaptation of Thomas Mann’s The Holy Sinner named “Gregorius, the Chosen One.” It’s also worth noting again that KVIFF will feature a wealth of retrospectives: “A Matter of Life and Death,” “Kes,” Río Escondido,” and more.
Below are the competition titles and juries.
Crystal Globe Competition
3 nedelje posle / 3 Weeks After
Director: Miroslav Terzić
Serbia, Bulgaria, 2026, 94 min, World premiere
Cherni pari za beli noshti / Black Money for White
Director: Kristina Grozeva, Petar Valchanov
Bulgaria, Greece, 2025, 94 min, World premiere
Chica Checa
Director: Šimon Holý
Czech Republic, France, Slovak Republic, 2026, 96 min, World premiere
Cinco años, cuatro meses / Five Years, Four Months
Director: Esteban Hoyos García, Juan Miguel Gelacio Ramírez
Colombia, USA, 2025, 83 min, World premiere
Detrás de la lluvia / Behind the Rain
Director: Valeria Sarmiento
Chile, 2026, 97 min, World premiere
Gæsten / The Guest
Director: Mads Mengel
Denmark, 2026, 99 min, World premiere
A Happy Family
Director: Jan-Eric Mack
Switzerland, 2026, 120 min, World premiere
Hijamat
Director: Nader Saeivar
Germany, 2026, 103 min, World premiere
The Lion at My Back
Director: Tonia Mishiali
Cyprus, Luxembourg, Greece, 2026, 106 min, World premiere
Pipes
Director: Karim Kassem
Lebanon, 2025, 112 min, World premiere
Prameň / Only Beautiful Things to Look At
Director: Ivan Ostrochovský
Slovak Republic, Czech Republic, Hungary, 2026, 90 min, World premiere
Thit-thee Khu / Fruit Gathering
Director: Aung Phyoe
Myanmar, France, Czech Republic, 2026, 97 min, World premiere
Proxima Competition
33 krokov / 33 Steps
Director: Anna Domček, Šimon Domček
Slovak Republic, Czech Republic, 2026, 71 min, World premiere
Camionero / Truck Driver
Director: Francisco Marise
Spain, Argentina, 2026, 84 min, World premiere
Contra la Naturaleza / Against Nature
Director: Axel Bertha
Mexico, 2026, 86 min, World premiere
Enas olokliros anthropos schedon / A Whole Person Almost
Director: Efthimis Kosemund-Sanidis
Greece, Bulgaria, Germany, Cyprus, Romania, 2025, 111 min, World premiere
Homo Sive Natura
Director: Giovanni C. Lorusso
Italy, 2026, 115 min, World premiere
The Ink-Stained Hand and the Missing Thumb
Director: Yashasvi Juyal
India, 2026, 120 min, World premiere
Mein Freund der Pornostar / My Friend the Porn Star
Director: Rosa Friedrich
Austria, 2026, 94 min, World premiere
Milovník, nie bojovník / Lover, Not a Fighter
Director: Martina Buchelová
Slovak Republic, 2026, 108 min, World premiere
Paris Paris
Director: Isabelle Tollenaere
Belgium, 2026, 78 min, World premiere
Rain Catcher
Director: Michele Fiascaris
Italy, United Kingdom, 2026, 109 min, World premiere
Shokyakuro / Incinerator
Director: Shuntaro Uchida
Japan, 2026, 97 min, World premiere
Sitni lopovi / Petty Thieves
Director: Mate Ugrin
Croatia, Germany, France, 2026, 106 min, World premiere
Special Screenings
Bára Basiková / Bára – Diary of a Rockstar
Director: Helena Třeštíková
Czech Republic, 2026, 97 min, World premiere
Dvě deci tuše / A Pint of Ink
Director: Ester Geislerová
Czech Republic, Slovak Republic, 2026, 83 min, World premiere
Kdyby se holubi proměnili ve zlato / If Pigeons Turned to Gold
Director: Pepa Lubojacki
Czech Republic, Slovak Republic, 2026, 110 min
Khaneh doost injast / The Friend’s House is Here
Director: Maryam Ataei, Hossein Keshavarz
Iran, USA, 2025, 96 min, International premiere
Learning To Breathe Underwater
Director: Rebekah Fortune
United Kingdom, Netherlands, Ireland, 2026, 95 min, World premiere
Město otců / City of Fathers
Director: Zdeněk Tyc
Czech Republic, Slovak Republic, Poland, 2026, 100 min, World premiere
Mistryně / Everything As It Should Be
Director: Bohdan Karásek
Czech Republic, 2026, 101 min, World premiere
Morten
Director: Ivan Pavljutskov
Estonia, Lithuania, 2026, 101 min, World premiere
Robert Richardson: The White Devil
Director: Jana Hojdová
Czech Republic, USA, 2026, 105 min, World premiere
The Story of Documentary Film – 1980s
Director: Mark Cousins
United Kingdom, 2026, 120 min, World premiere
To Die to Live
Director: Yuliia Hontaruk
Ukraine, Latvia, Slovak Republic, 2026, 116 min, World premiere
Vyvolený / Gregorius, the Chosen One
Director: Tomasz Mielnik
Czech Republic, Poland, Romania, 2026, 90 min, World premiere
Zpráva pro Minervu 2 / A Report for Minerva 2
Director: Miroslav Krobot, Lubomír Smékal
Czech Republic, 2026, 69 min, World premiere
Crystal Globe Jury
Justin Chang
Justin Chang is a film critic at The New Yorker and NPR’s “Fresh Air”. He won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for criticism for his writing at the Los Angeles Times, where he spent eight years as a critic. Previously, he was the chief film critic at Variety. Chang serves as chair of the National Society of Film Critics and secretary of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, and is a member of the New York Film Festival selection committee. He teaches at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California.
Amanda Nell Eu
Amanda Nell Eu is a filmmaker based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Her debut feature film Tiger Stripes was the Grand Prize winner of Semaine de la Critique in the 2023 Cannes Film Festival. The film was also the official Malaysian submission for the Academy Awards in 2023. Amanda graduated from the London Film School with an MA in Filmmaking and is an alumna of Berlinale Talents, Tokyo Talents and Locarno Filmmakers Academy. She has also served as a jury member at various film festivals and mentored film workshops internationally.
Pavel Rejholec
Pavel Rejholec is a Czech sound designer, producer, composer, and educator. He graduated from the Department of Sound Design at FAMU, where he has been head of the department since 2011. Throughout his career, he has worked as a sound designer on more than fifty Czech and international feature films. Since 2003, he has served as the managing director of the Soundsquare studio. He has won eight Czech Lion Awards for Best Sound, for instance, for the films Zátopek or The Painted Bird. As a dubbing supervisor, he collaborated with Lucasfilm on Star Wars: Episode II and Star Wars: Episode III. He is a member of the Motion Picture Sound Editors and serves on the board of the Czech Film and Television Academy.
Nadia Turincev
Nadia Turincev was born in Moscow, grew up in Paris and studied cultural anthropology. She started off in the movie industry aged 16, making sandwiches for Marcello Mastroianni. In 2007, she co-founded Rouge International, producing 25+ films (Fix ME, Mimosas, Raw, Oscar-nominated The Insult and Faces Places). In 2019 she left Rouge and created Easy Riders Films (Mariupolis 2, Crossing, Only Rebels Win) with Omar El Kadi. She recently opened her solo company Sento Films to produce “unrealizable” films.
Eskil Vogt
Eskil Vogt is a two-time Oscar-nominated Norwegian filmmaker. His directing debut Blind (2014) premiered at the Sundance FF where it won the Screenwriting Award. His sophomore effort, The Innocents (2021), premiered at the Cannes FF before going on to win more than 20 international awards. Eskil also collaborates closely with Joachim Trier, co-writing all of Trier’s features since Reprise (2006), including Oslo, August 31st (2011), The Worst Person in the World (2021) and Sentimental Value (2025). Vogt is a directing graduate from La Fémis, the French national film school.
Proxima Jury
Estrella Araiza
Estrella Araiza is the General Director of the Guadalajara International Film Festival (FICG) and Cineteca UDG, where she has focused on strengthening the presence of Mexican and Latin American cinema across both institutions. Her professional career includes experience as Director of Industry and Market at FICG, as well as work as a sales agent, academic, and film distributor in Mexico. She began her career in international film distribution in 2005, and in 2012 founded her own company, Vendo Cine. Since 2018, she has overseen FICG’s special projects, including the acclaimed exhibition Guillermo del Toro: At Home with My Monsters in Guadalajara.
Dirk Decker
Dirk Decker is a producer and co-founder of Hamburg-based Tamtam Film. Through Tamtam, he works with emerging talents and supports distinctive auteur cinema across fiction and documentary. His productions have premiered at major international festivals. Recent titles include Rain Fell on the Nothing New (Karlovy Vary 2025), Short Summer (Venice 2025, Lion of the Future) and Trial of Hein (Berlinale 2026, Teddy Jury Award).
Jakub Felcman
Jakub Felcman is a Czech screenwriter, festival organizer, film critic, creative producer, director, and qualified plumber. He studied film at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University, and FAMU, published interviews and film analyses (for Cinepur), programmed film festivals, and co-founded two of them (Ostrava Kamera Oko, Marienbad). As a script editor he collaborated on films by Jan Němec, Petr Václav, Radu Jude, and Corneliu Porumboiu. Cinemas have screened several films that he co-wrote or produced (such as A Night Too Young, A Certain Kind of Silence, and The Wolf from Royal Vineyard Street).
Devika Girish
Devika Girish is editor at Film Comment magazine and a Talks programmer at the New York Film Festival. Her writing also appears in The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, The Nation, The New Republic, Sight & Sound, The Criterion Collection, and others, and she has programmed series and festivals for the Criterion Channel, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Film at Lincoln Center, the Mumbai Film Festival, the Berlin Critics’ Week, and more. Devika has been invited to juries at CPH:DOX, the Locarno Film Festival, SEMINCI, and Visions du Réel.
Marija Kavtaradze
Marija Kavtaradze is a Lithuanian director and screenwriter. Graduating from the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre in 2014, she made her feature debut with Summer Survivors in 2018, which premiered at the Toronto IFF, followed by Slow (2023), which earned her a Directing Award at the Sundance Film Festival and had its European premiere at KVIFF in 2023. Marija works as a screenwriter on shorts and feature films, including The Visitor (dir. Vytautas Katkus, KVIFF 2025), Runner (dir. Andrius Blaževičius, KVIFF 2021), the animated TV series BFF for kids, and others.
