Restoration wins top prize in Karlovy Vary

Israeli family drama Restoration has been awarded the grand prix, the Crystal Globe, at the 46th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. The award comes with $30,000 to be split by the director and producer. Joseph Madmony’s film previously won the screenwriting award in Sundance.

”Restoration was a labor of love — lacking money, I gave it all my heart and now I feel as if the movie is paying me back. And to be awarded the KVIFF Grand Prix-Crystal Globe by one of my inspirations as a film student, Istvan Szabo, as head of the jury, makes me as happy and grateful as I can be,” said Madmony.

The special jury prize and $20,000 went to Gypsy (Cigan) by Martin Sulik (Slovak Republic-Czech Republic).

The best director award went to France’s Pascal Rabate for Holidays By The Sea.

Best actress was Stine Fischer Christensen for Cracks In The Shell (Die Unsichtbar) and best actor was David Morse for Collaborator. Special mentions for acting went to Ján Mizigár for Gypsy and Jocelyn Pook for Room 304.

This year’s Grand Jury was comprised of Istvan Szabo (president), Vladimir Balko, Michel Ciment, Michel Demopoulos, Edna Fainaru, Sibel Kekilli and Pavel Strnad.

The East of the West award, with $10,000, went to Vladimir Blazevski’s Punk’s Not Dead (Pankot ne e mrtov) from Macedonia/Serbia; a special mention went to Victor Ginzburg’s Generation P.

The best feature documentary award and $10,000 went to Eva Mulvad’s The Good Life (Det gode liv) from Denmark and best documentary under 30 minutes went to Marcin Koszalka’s Declaration of Immortality.

The Independent Camera Award in the Forum of Independents went to Aaron Houston’s Sunflower Hour from Canada.

The audience award went to Nicky’s Family by Matej Minac (Slovak Republic-Czech Republic); the FIPRESCI prize to Martin Donovan’s Collaborator; and the ecumenical prize to Cracks in The Shell. (More prizes can be found at kviff.com.)

There were 12,033 accredited vistors including 10,266 with festival passes (that is up from 9,424 in 2010). There were 310 filmmakers, 814 film professionals and 649 journalists. There were 165 feature films shown.

The festival was the first since longtime programmer Karel Och took over as artistic director. Och said he was impressed by the youthful energy this year. “This year we have even more young filmmakers than usual, we’re always loaded with new talents but it’s even more this year,” Och told Screen. “We redefined the East of the West competition to focus more on young filmmakers from Central and Eastern Europe, and the Forum of Independents has a lot of new filmmakers as well. It helps the atmosphere to have young filmmakers here, and watching other films by other filmmakers too.” There were 54 debut films across the programme.

Andrea Szczukova of the festival’s industry office said that there were more distributors in attendance in 2011 than in past years. “It was a good year for the industry,” she told Screen. “Everyone saw it was worth it to be here. New buyers came and the community was quite strong.”

Among the industry presentations were 24 films in the Works In Progress programme (chosen from a record 50 submissions). Some industry attendees told Screen that the selection should be whittled down even further to present fewer, only top-notch projects.

For the second year, KVIFF is letting buyers on Cinando watch its competition films (as of yesterday).

The 2012 festival dates have been set for June 29-July 7.Och said he is already thinking about retrospectives to discuss with the team in the autumn.

Looking ahead to new industry plans, Szczukova said the festival would consider a platform to present Czech and Slovak productions in pre-production to attraced co-producers. She also said the future-thinking panel with Ted Hope and Brian Newman was such a success this year that there could be more sessions in 2012 devoted to ideas about the film industry’s changing future.