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KARLOVY VARY IFF Official Competition

Opening on Time, with family troubles

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The Karlovy Vary Film Festival kicked off its 41st edition on Friday with a gala that reunited Korean director Kim Ki-duk (who directed the opening film Time), Cuban-American actor-director and Career Crystal Globe honouree Andy Garcia, and US actor Danny Huston, in town for the retrospective dedicated to his father John.

Besides Time and Garcia’s The Lost City, the initial festival weekend saw the premiere of three family dramas as well as local charmer Beauty in Trouble from Jan Hrebejk.

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Competition titles Sherrybaby from the US, Finnish drama Frozen City and Mouth to Mouth, Bjorn Runge’s follow-up to Daybreak, are three tragedies about the responsibilities parents have towards their offspring.

In Sherrybaby, a typical US indie film, a recovering drug addict wants to look after her little girl again, while in the Swedish Mouth to Mouth (produced by Clas Gunnarsson for Zoyd Produktion), the opposite happens: a daughter gets into drugs as a way of escaping her father, in a film that is a typical Scandinavian uncovering of a seemingly happy family but has been shot in a lavish fashion unusual for such films.

Also from the north: Aku LouhimiesFrozen City, his follow-up to the much laurelled Frozen Land, which was again produced by Solar Films Inc. Oy, concentrates on the fate of a recently divorced father of three. He might have a bad temper and say the wrong thing at the wrong time, but his humanity is never in doubt when we see him giving his all to his offspring – though that might not be enough to survive.

Along with these dark tales that uncover unbearably strained relationships with surgical precision, there was a look at the sunnier side of life in Beauty in Trouble, the new film from Jan Hrebejk (Divided we Fall, Up and Down), who pushes his talent for dramatic comedy almost into Silvio Soldini-territory in this Total HelpArt production.

Beauty is being sold internationally by Menemsha Films and will be distributed locally by Falcon in September.

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