Nina Knag’s road to hell on a fine, strapping pavement of good intentions: Se meg
KVIFF 2025: Norwegians! They try to be nice but really they’re dark to the core – just how the Czechs like them!
Daniele Luchetti’s Confidenza let’s slip love’s fearful, darker side
KVIFF 2024: Confidenza has a remarkable capacity to challenge spectators to push their own boundaries and rethink their sense of self and social connection.
Karlovy Vary 2024: ‘It was the best of times. It was the worst of times…’
KVIFF 2024: Back to my people, my Brigadoon-style episodic community, my lovely, fragile, tragicomic festival! What follow are the confessions of a diehard festival-head.
KVIFF 2023: Norwegian actor Herbert Nordrum hypnotises Czech Republic
KVIFF 2023: Ernst De Geer’s Hypnosen («The Hypnosis») put a spell on audiences at Karlovy Vary last week. It’s hard to think of a more telling and darkly ironical critique of the seldom-questioned, self-satisfied direction of modern society.
Just make something up! Tales of tall tales and parables for our times (KVIFF 2022)
Karlovy Vary 2020: We live in an age of creative awakening. This is the flipside, the upside of ‘post-truth times.’ We know not where this leads but it behoves us to make the best of the journey. The alternative is dystopia – and we all know what that is like!
Girls on film: Nina Menkes’ Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power (KVIFF 2022)
KVIFF 2022: The truth about ‘girls on film’ according to director Nina Menkes.
Vitaly Mansky’s Putin’s Witnesses exposes the kingmakers who killed democracy
Karlovy Vary 2018: «Is Putin charismatic? On the basis of a cursory appraisal we would surely say ‘No’ but we would just as surely be dead wrong – and quite possibly also dead.»
You can almost taste the authenticity in Žiga Virc’s “documentary” Houston, We Have a Problem!
Karlovy Vary 2016: Houston, We Have a Problem! is a minor masterpiece of plausible fabrication, tracking real events with an unwavering satirical eye, and placing them in a perspective that is at once ridiculous and illuminating.
Vitaly Mansky’s Under the Sun is an absorbing investigation of North Korea
Karlovy Vary 2016: What makes Under the Sun so effective is the way it has managed to capture the beauty of North Korea and juxtapose it with social relationships that provoke, at best, a much more ambivalent response.
Norway’s got talent – so don’t squander it! Rebecca Figenschau’s Elephant Skin receives warm reception at Karlovy Vary Film Festival
Karlovy Vary 2016: Rebecca Figenschau’s short drama-film Elephant Skin (2015) received its international premiere and a warm reception at Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (KVIFF) this week. But why is this the only new Norwegian film being shown here?
No sex please, we’re filmmakers! Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel breaks the mould with Bird Hearts
Karlovy Vary 2015: If you see one sex-film this summer, make it this one.
Norwegians – what are they good for? Dirk Ohm at Karlovy Vary International Film Festival
Karlovy Vary 2015: Norwegians – what are they good for? At the international premiere of Bobbie Peers’s debut feature The Disappearing Illusionist I found the answer and – trust me – it’s not what you think!