Fruit Gathering wins top prize while Juliette Binoche honoured at Karlovy Vary
The landmark 60th edition of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival was won by the Myanmar-made, Czech co-produced Fruit Gathering. Meanwhile the great French actress Juliette Binoche received a lifetime achievement award from the region’s biggest film event.
The Grand Prix for Best Film at the 2026 Karlovy Vary International Film Festival went to Fruit Gathering. It is a Burmese, Czech and French co-production – and was the first ever work from Myanmar to compete for a Crystal Globe.
Fruit Gathering centres on the life of a young woman who falls for a female friend and workmate – and was directed by Aung Phyo.
“It’s my first film. It’s set in contemporary Burma and working class society. I was also brought up in that lower middle class society, so this is a class of people I’m really very familiar with. The film is about someone who wasn’t properly loved when she was growing up – and when she sees someone she loves, she is unable to express it.”
Denmark’s The Guest earned a Best Director gong for Mads Mengel, as well as walking away with the Special Jury Prize. First-time director Mengel, who also wrote the screenplay, spoke to festival TV shortly after the awards ceremony.
“I think the film is about forgiveness and about family and mental illness. It’s a subject that’s always been close to my heart and that I’ve found interesting. The idea came to me many years ago and I knew I wanted to make something about that – and then it slowly took shape and became what it is today.”
The Best Actress prize went to Anna Schinz, who plays a frazzled single mother trying, and sometimes failing, to provide her children with a stable life in Swiss picture A Happy Family.
“I would say she is a very ambivalent character. She’s full of hope, and failure, and every kind of characteristic that a human being can have. It was really a challenge for me to portray such a complex woman. I think it’s very important, especially, that women’s and mother’s characters are seen in the cinema.”
Schinz also spoke a few words in Czech on stage after receiving her award.
“My mother and my grandmother are from Prague and they migrated to Switzerland. I grew up with this mother tongue and also used to vacation in Prague.”
The Best Actor prize went to Ghassan Saad for his part in the Lebanese film Pipes.
Karlovy Vary’s second competition, Proxima, was won by Slovak director Martina Buchelová for A Lover, Not a Fighter. And the audience award went to Bára – Diary of a Rockstar by Czech documentarian Helena Třeštíková.
The biggest star of the evening was undoubtedly French actress Juliette Binoche, who received KVIFF’s Crystal Globe for outstanding artistic contribution to world cinema.
In her acceptance speech, the European cinema great became tearful over not being able to visit this part of the world under communism.
“I was wishing to come here a long time ago, when I was preparing The Unbearable Lightness of Being – and I couldn’t come here. So this is very meaningful. But we’re not divided any more in Europe, which is just wonderful.”
The next edition of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival will begin on July 2, 2027.
