Winners of Karlovy Vary film festival announced at glitzy closing ceremony

The winners of this year’s Karlovy Vary International Film Festival were announced on Saturday evening in a star-studded prize-giving ceremony in the Great Hall of the Thermal Hotel. The top prize in the main Crystal Globe competition for Best Film, beating 11 other contenders, went to the Iranian-Canadian social drama Summer with Hope, directed by Sadaf Foroughi, about a boy who forms an alliance with his swimming coach that elicits disapproval from the people around them.

Australian actor Geoffrey Rush received the Crystal Globe for outstanding artistic contribution to world cinema. Rush delivered the opening sentences of his acceptance speech in Czech and mentioned several Czech personalities that he admires, such as theatre actors Jiří Srnec and Bolek Polívka, writer Karel Čapek, and former Prime Minister Václav Havel.

The Special Jury Prize went to the Spanish film You Have to Come and See It directed by Jonás Trueba, a summer miniature with four protagonists shot in only two locations, looking into the current generation of thirty-somethings in Spain. The winner of the all-new Proxima competition, which showcases emerging filmmakers and fresh approaches from all over the globe, was the documentary Art Talent Show by Adéla Komrzý and Tomáš Bojar, about how entrance exams are held at Prague’s Academy of Fine Arts.