I am delighted to see the strong Italian presence at Karlovy Vary this year.
I am extremely pleased to have Saturno contro in competition, not only because I personally selected the film after it debuted in Rome, but also because Ferzan Ozpetek is a long-established friend of ours. In fact his Facing Window won the Grand Prize – Crystal Globe at Karlovy Vary in 2003, as well as coming away with awards for Best Director and Best Actress. So our audience is well acquainted with Ferzan and I am sure his new film will also be appreciated here. The audience was uppermost in our minds when we selected other wonderful recent examples of Italian cinema: The Golden Door by Emanuele Crialese, which I enthusiastically applauded after seeing in Venice last year; One Hundred Nails, the very important film by Ermanno Olmi, a director I have admired since he started making films; My Brother Is an Only Child, Daniele Luchetti’s masterpiece that recently charmed the public at Cannes; and the melancholic yet never desperate story Eugenio Cappuccio recounts in One Out of Two. All these works will be shown in the Open Eyes and Horizons sections. If this program fills me with pride for having invited works to Karlovy Vary that embody and prove the creative ability of the maestros of contemporary Italian cinema, I would like to stress my additional satisfaction about the line-up for the Focus On New Italian Directors. Thanks to Filmitalia’s kindness and availability, I had the opportunity to choose 8 interesting films, which as well as illustrating their directors’ talents, also reflect on their relationship with reality. The themes in these films are all very different, each director having their own personal style, but all the works exude the author’s expression of a desire to do something about the problems of the world today and the society in which they live.
Eva Zaoralova
Artistic Director
Karlovy Vary IFF