Karlovy Vary Film Festival Critic’s Take: Czech Cinema Triumphs and Stellan Skarsgård Makes a Splash

Having a front row seat to all the goings on at the 59th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival this week meant seeing some invigorating new films that, much like Cannes did just a couple months back, confronted the frequently dark and painful parts of our world in an attempt to find whatever small slivers of humanity they could. The films couldn’t always hold onto this feeling and the searching could often be more than a little fraught, though the festival’s brightest spots came from the ones that tried to do so all the same. 

In particular, the best two films in the main competition were the Czech films “Broken Voices” and “Better Go Mad in the Wild,” the latter of which rightfully took home the top prize Saturday evening while the former received a special jury mention for the exciting newcomer Kateřina Falbrová. Though their recognition opened up discussion on what film will become the Czech Oscar submission (the consensus being that it was likely to be “Broken Voices” as it’s more grounded in history where “Better Go Mad in the Wild is less conventional), the films could not be more different, serving as a demonstration of the range of the country’s cinema in 2025.

Where “Broken Voices” was about a real case of abuse and how people can look the other way, “Better Go Mad in the Wild” is a hybrid documentary that uses inventive approaches to create a narrative of sorts about two real-life twins finding meaning in life. What united them and the other standout competition films of the festival (such as “Bidad” and “When a River Becomes a Sea”) was how they remained driven by a profound sociological interest in everyday people. 

Beyond that, there were also outstanding films already known from having shown at prior festivals that still felt integral to the identity of Karlovy Vary this year. Most significant was Dea Kulumbegashvili’s astounding “April,” a formally ambitious and assured drama about a OB/BYN performing abortions. It’s a film that has only grown more urgent since it premiered back at Venice last year and is certain to be one of the best of the year. More than anything, it’s good to see her film getting in front of as many audiences after it never received a proper release in her home country of Georgia, due to it not getting a distributor out of concerns of government repression.

The director, who also led a masterclass at the festival, will also make her next feature in America under Emma Stone and Dave McCary’s production banner Fruit Tree, making her current film even more critical to catch up with. That Karlovy Vary provided a chance to see Kulumbegashvili’s compassionate yet agonizing vision of sound and fury on the big screen was a highlight all on its own. What makes it so outstanding is the immense care Kulumbegashvili brings to both craft and character, representing the pinnacle of what modern cinema can only aspire to be.

There were plenty of other such films from other festivals, such as the Sundance entries  “All That’s Left of You,” “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You,” “Peter Hujar’s Day,” and “Zodiac Killer Project.” Berlin supplied Michel Franco’s “Dreams,” and as usually KVIFF programmed a large number of films from Cannes, including “Dangerous Animals,” “It Was Just an Accident,” “Resurrection,” “Sorry, Baby” and “Urchin.”

Outside of the films, an onstage interview with Stellan Skarsgård captured the most attention. It came when the Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgård told the Hollywood Reporter columnist Scott Feinberg and a live audience that the late filmmaker Ingmar Bergman “was a Nazi during the war and the only person I know who cried when Hitler died” — which, based on the reverberations it has caused in film circles, seems to have been the first time many heard about the director’s history. (Bergman never attempted to hide his initial Nazi sympathies but disavowed Hitler after the war when the extent of Nazi atrocities became evident.)

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