KVIFF Eastern Promises
We strive to help discover promising talent from the regions of Central and Eastern Europe and the Middle East, revealing it to over 1,300 distributors, sales agents, producers and festival programmers who attend the festival each year. Both European and non-European local distributors and major international sales reps rely on Karlovy Vary when searching for new movies. International sales companies introduce their films to both distributors and journalists from around the world. Our industry days program comprises a number of workshops, panels, and presentations and film professionals are invited to a number of accompanying social events. Our primary focus on the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the Middle East makes it possible for key European and American industry players to discover fresh new projects in various stages of development and production.
The festival curates projects in-the-making which at the time of their presentation seek partners for production or post-production, international sales or festival premieres. All film projects span the region of Central, Eastern and post-soviet Europe, with the new addition of the territories of the Middle East. Filmmakers and producers pitch scripts in development, films in production or post-production as well as documentary projects – all selected from a wide array of highly competitive submissions.
Selection of 12 fiction and documentary films in all stages of post-production from the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, the Balkans, the former Soviet Union, the Middle East and North Africa. The most promising projects will be awarded the post-production services package and cash prizes. These projects are often selected for the upcoming festivals such as Sundance, Toronto, Venice, Rotterdam or Berlinale.
Karlovy Vary International Film Festival has partnered closely with the MIDPOINT Institute script and project development program as well as When East Meets West co-production market and Trieste Film Festival. Together they will showcase 9 projects from Central and Eastern Europe at this year’s edition of KVIFF. These projects have gone through development within the Works in Development – Feature Launch program and are ready for co-production.
First Cut+ is a program launched in 2020 for boosting the promotion & audience engagement strategies of feature films that previously took part in a First Cut Lab workshop. The event is open to selected decision makers (sales agents & distributors, festivals’ programmers, etc).
First Cut Lab Karlovy Vary is a programme designed for 2 long feature fiction films in editing phase from the Czech Republic or Slovakia. Selected producer/director teams will screen their full rough cut in a private session and receive expert feedback on their edit from three top international film professionals (creative producers, festival programmers, sales agents, etc) as well as tailor-made advice from a consultant editor.
The award was aimed to the most promising film project at the Karlovy Vary IFF. Eurimages wished to invest in new forms of cinematographic expression often crossing to other art forms.
In the past years at this event, producers and directors from the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, the Balkans, the former Soviet Union, the Middle East and North Africa introduced new documentary films. The most promising project of Docs in Progress used to receive a cash award in a total value of 5 000 EUR. In 2022 documentary and fiction films merged into Works in Progress.
The unprecedented military assault on Ukraine has been accompanied by fundamental limitations to the country’s cultural life. The Karlovy Vary IFF expressed its full support for Ukrainian filmmakers and festival organizers, and thus hosted the Works-in-Progress program of the 13th Odesa International Film Festival 2022, which could not be held there because of the war.
First-hand brews throughout the year.
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