Viggo Mortensen, Clive Owen and Daniel Brühl will each receive the Karlovy Vary’s Honorary Presidents Award at this year’s edition, which runs from June 28 to July 6.
Mortensen will receive the award at the festival’s opening ceremony, prior to the screening of his latest directorial work The dead don’t hurt. The picture is Mortensen’s second outing as director and will serve as the festival’s opening film. As with his debut, he wrote the screenplay, acted as director and producer, composed the music and played one of the leading roles.
Owen and Brühl will receive their awards later during the festival. To celebrate their honor, Owen will screen his 2004 film Closer while Brühl will feature his directorial debut Next-door.
Veteran filmmaker Steven Soderbergh will also be in town to present two of his films: Kafka And Mr. Kneff, which will screen as part of the festival’s Kafka retrospective, The Wish to Be a Red Indian: Kafka and Cinema. Elsewhere, Nicole Holofcener travels to Karlovy Vary to screen three of her films, Please give, enough saidand 2023 You hurt my feelings. Mexican-born filmmaker Michel Franco will screen his 2023 drama Memory, with Jessica Chastain and Peter Sarsgaard. And Ti West will be in Karlovy Vary to introduce MaXXXinethe final part of his X-trilogy, produced by A24.
In addition to this year’s Karlovy Vary films, the festival also announced today that Benicio del Toro will be the main character in the 2024 festival trailer. Every year the festival produces a satirical ‘festival trailer’ that is shown during the opening ceremony. This year’s trailer was written and directed by Ivan Zachariáš, a long-time creator of KVIFF trailers.
“We filmed with Benicio del Toro in Berlin in May, where he took time with us during the shooting of Wes Anderson’s new film. His first reaction was: ‘It’s a great idea, but we have to be quick.’ said Zechariah. “Benicio was a professional. He immediately understood what I wanted from him and that’s how we got most of the recordings in one go. We were prepared in advance, we marked all the camera positions and lenses before shooting, and in the end Benicio himself was surprised at how we managed it all.”
British band Kosheen will perform as part of the opening concert of the 58th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. The concert will be free to the public.
