‘Empty Nets’ Review: A Harsh But Nuanced Look At Today’s Cost-Of-Living Crisis From An Iranian Perspective – Karlovy Vary Int’l Film Festival

The lessons learned in this pitch-black German-Bulgarian co-production are very grim indeed, a social-realist drama that takes an unexpectedly shocking turn at its harrowing climax. The film’s recent win at Karlovy Vary, where it took the Grand Prix in the Crystal Globe Competition, should give it a welcome boost on the arthouse circuit, but the unwary are warned that Stephan Komandarev’s latest feature packs a punch not seen since Lars Von Trier or Michael Haneke in their provocative prime.

Despite the impact of the pandemic and the cost of living crisis which has hit us all in the pocket, Cheshire Oaks has somehow found a way to thrive.

Sir Rod Stewart has helped to make a little girl’s dream come true after learning that she watches her mum go without food to feed her family.The legendary rocker said his 'heart broke' after reading the plight of schoolgirl Sophia McKenzie in the Daily Record. He has now offered to donate £2500 to help Sophia's mum Heather Griffiths with her financial struggles.

Crystal Globe CompetitionJury members:Dora Bouchoucha, TunisiaPatricia Clarkson, USAJohn Nein, USAOlmo Omerzu, Czech Republic / SloveniaBarry Ward, IrelandGRAND PRIX – CRYSTAL GLOBE (25 000 USD)The financial award is shared equally by the director and producer of the award-winningfilm.“Blaga’s Lessons” (“Urotcite na Blaga”)Directed by: Stephan KomandarevBulgaria, Germany, 2023SPECIAL JURY PRIZE (15 000 USD)The financial award is shared equally by the director and producer of the award-winningfilm.“Empty Nets” (“Toorhaye khali”)Directed by: Behrooz KaramizadeGermany, Iran, 2023BEST DIRECTOR AWARDBabak Jalali for the film “Fremont”USA, 2023BEST ACTRESS AWARDEli Skorcheva for her role in the film “Blaga’s Lessons” (“Urotcite na Blaga”)Bulgaria, Germany, 2023BEST ACTOR AWARDHerbert Nordrum for his role in the film “The Hypnosis” (“Hypnosen”)Sweden, Norway, France, 2023SPECIAL JURY MENTION“Dancing on the Edge of a Volcano”Directed by: Cyril ArisGermany, Lebanon, 2023PRÁVO AUDIENCE AWARD“The Edge of the Blade” (“Une affaire d’honneur”Directed by: Vincent PerezFrance, 2023Proxima CompetitionJury Members:Dana Linssen, NetherlandsMarija Razgutė, LithuaniaŠimon Šafránek, Czech RepublicBarbara Wurm, AustriaMeng Xie, People’s Republic of ChinaPROXIMA GRAND PRIX (15 000 USD)The financial award is shared equally by the director and producer of the award-winningfilm.“Birth”Directed by: Yoo Ji-youngSouth Korea, 2022PROXIMA SPECIAL JURY PRIZE (10 000 USD)The financial award is shared equally by the director and producer of the award-winningfilm.“Guras”Directed by: Saurav RaiIndia, Nepal, 2023SPECIAL JURY MENTION“Brutal Heat” (“Brutální vedro”Directed by: Albert HospodářskýCzech Republic, Slovak Republic, 2023CRYSTAL GLOBE FOR OUTSTANDING

Norwegian cinema has been enjoying a moment lately, what with Joachim Trier’s crowdpleasing The Worst Person in the World pulling up to Drive My Car in the Oscar race and Kristoffer Borgli’s Sick of Me carving out a rep on the festival circuit. The Hypnosis, Ernst de Geer’s feature debut, sits somewhere between the two of them, fashioning a fitfully funny relationship drama that tilts at some very modern windmills (coaches, gurus, new-tech start-ups, workshops that involve blue-sky thinking) within a framework similar to Kristian Levring’s 2008 Danish drama Fear Me Not, in which a man’s personality changes after he becomes addicted to an experimental drug. The Hypnosis doesn’t quite follow that film’s melodramatic course, but there are similar thoughts raised about the human mind.

Jessica Kiang At a festival the size and stature of the Czech Republic’s Karlovy Vary, new discoveries are a daily occurrence. But it is rare that at festival’s end, one of the most excitingly buzzy emergent names should be that of a filmmaker who died 27 years ago and who has languished in relative obscurity – certainly in the Anglophone world – ever since. And yet here we are, at the tail end of an 11-film Yasuzo Masumura retrospective – the biggest of its kind ever mounted at an international film festival – that has proved, in a word, revelatory.  It’s not just in terms of blowing the dust from this extraordinary, unjustly overlooked filmmaker’s catalog, but also in the broader sense of being an exemplary model for how to connect a vibrant, youthful regional audience to global film history. There is a classic film fan born every minute, but in Karlovy Vary this year, you could feel it happen in real time during the screenings of Masumura’s  “A Cheerful Girl” (1957), “Hoodlum Soldier” (1965), “Spider Tattoo” (1966) and so on.  

The 57th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (June 30 – July 8) came to a close this evening with an awards ceremony that bestowed two key prizes to contemporary Bulgarian drama Blaga’s Lessons (Urotcite Na Blaga) by director Stephan Komandarev.

Will Tizard Contributor Bulgarian crime story “Blaga’s Lessons” by Stephan Komandarev scored the top prize and $25,000 at the 57th Karlovy Vary Film Festival on Saturday, capping a week of celebrating art film, stars and bold global work. With sold out screenings ranging from Russell Crowe introducing “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World” to rare Japanese masterworks by Yasuzo Masumura and a tribute to actor Daniela Kolarova, Czech audiences proved once again to be hungry for every kind of film they cannot experience at any other venue. The Crystal Globe competition special jury prize, along with $15,000, went to “Empty Nets,” a German-Iranian gritty love story directed by Behrooz Karamizade.

For writer-director Naqqash Khalid, questions are more important than answers and this premise is something the academic-turned-filmmaker explores heavily in his debut film In Camera, which recently premiered at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. The bold film, which opened to positive reviews after it screened in the fest’s Proxima section last week, is the first feature to come out of the 2019 iFeatures slate, the low-budget Creative UK scheme from the UK’s BFI Film Fund and BBC Film. 

In the past decade or so, the country of Georgia has produced many raw and powerful films from women directors examining the country’s modern women as they seek their newfound independence. Director and co-writer Elene Naveriani’s romantic drama “Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry” is a striking new entry to this film movement, anchored by a fierce and sensual performance from star Eka Chavleishvili.

Since producing Todd Haynes’ Sundance-winning drama “Poison” in 1991, Christine Vachon has helped bring some of the most unique and memorable independent films to the big – and small screen.

Guy Lodge Film Critic It’s hard to watch “Empty Nets” and not think of “Luzzu,” the recent, poignant Sundance prizewinner from Malta: In both films, enterprising young men left in the lurch by a national financial crisis must resort to black-market fishing to, well, stay afloat. (All we need is a third film paddling in such forbidden waters to declare a new neo-realist trend.) In “Luzzu,” the protagonist was a lifelong fisherman passionate about his trade, while Behrooz Karamizade’s lean, engrossing, Iran-set debut centers on a handy novice merely looking to make a quick buck. In this economy, however, such differences prove immaterial. It doesn’t matter where you’re coming from, unless you’re coming from money: You’re otherwise all sinking below the surface.

Winner of the Caméra d’Or for the best first feature film last month at the Cannes Film Festival, writer-director Pham Thien An’s “Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell” is a deeply felt three-hour spiritual odyssey about grief in its many forms.  READ MORE: ‘You Sing Loud, I Sing Louder’ Review: A Vulnerable Ewan McGregor Can’t Save This Father-Daughter Addiction Drama [Karlovy Vary] An impressive tracking shot moves from a nighttime soccer game through a lively street in Saigon before settling on friends having send-off drinks for a member of the group who is forsaking the city for a simple life in the mountains.

There’s a fine line between stylized direction and direction that is so fussy that it gets in the way of a film’s actors. Unfortunately for Emma Westenberg’s directorial debut, “You Sing Loud, I Sing Louder,” that’s a line she does not navigate successfully.

Boy meets girl is a tale as old as time and one that Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki has visited several times in a career that has spanned forty years, including in his latest romantic tragicomedy “Fallen Leaves.” His 20th feature film is a continuation of what’s been dubbed his Proletariat Trilogy, following “Shadows in Paradise,” “Ariel, “and “The Match Factory Girl.” While each film follows similar plotting, Kaurismäki places a direct emphasis on his unique working-class characters and a humanistic worldview, despite the external harshness of the world around them.  Continue reading ‘Fallen Leaves’ Review: Aki Kaurismäki’s Romantic Tragicomedy Finds Love In A Hopeless Place [Karlovy Vary] at The Playlist.

The unseen and the obscene are the subject of Pascal Plante’s disturbingly brilliant psychological horror, which takes an overused genre — the serial killer movie — and an often-misused technique — dark Lynchian surrealism — and somehow alchemizes the two into something new and original. It’s strong meat for sure (the courtroom-drama framing is deceptive, since this is not really a film about justice), but word-of-mouth cult status beckons, and a healthy nightlife on the genre circuit is assured.

EXCLUSIVE: Christine Vachon offered her outlook on some of the industry’s most pressing issues at a keynote masterclass session this afternoon at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.

Will Tizard Contributor In Robert Hloz’s sci-fi feature debut “Restore Point,” second chances are big business. In the year 2041, anyone who has an unnatural death has the right to be brought back to life, provided they’ve dutifully created a backup of their personality called a “restore point.” Naturally, some object to the notion of artificially extending life ad infinitum, wherein the story begins to get complicated. “I wanted to make a sci-fi film since I was a little kid,” Hloz says, “but I would never guess that it will happen to be my debut. I thought maybe third, fourth film.”

Nick Holdsworth Naqqash Khalid always wanted to make films. An English literature graduate of Salford University in Manchester, England, who began his working life as a lecturer in the university’s School of Arts and Media, Khalid dreamed of working with actors to create films that reflect our 21st century experience of a fractured world, dominated by mobile phones and social media, where time no longer seems to follow a linear path. His chance to make his dreams reality came when a script he wrote while still teaching at Salford was picked up by iFeatures – a BBC Film/Creative England/British Film Institute program for debut directors. A development grant in early 2020 enabled him to realize his script “In Camera,” which had its world premiere Saturday in Karlovy Vary Film Festival’s Proxima competition slot (for the Variety review see here).

The girlfriend of singer Darius Campbell Danesh has revealed more sad details about the sudden death of the British singer in August 2022.