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There’s no one way to experience the Karlovy Vary Film Festival, and no singular type of attendee. Stroll into the Grandhotel Pupp, the 18th century luxury resort that serves as the main social hive, and you may clink glasses with Netflix execs, members of the HFPA and filmmakers of all stripes; venture into the dense forests that surround the Czech spa town and discover the ad hoc sites where hundreds of teens camp out for a week-long party.

Head into a theater, however, and you’ll see those many worlds meet.

Boasting 453 screenings spread across nine days, this year’s edition wrapped this past weekend, awarding its top prize to the brooding Canadian-Iranian drama “Summer With Hope” ahead of a closing night presentation of George Miller’s “Three Thousand Years of Longing” – rather perfectly encapsulating the festival’s joint promise.

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A vivid, intimate drama about flatmates in Georgia, A Room Of My Own was a stand-out entry at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. Directed by Ioseb ‘Soso’ Bliadze, its two leads were jointly awarded the Best Actress prize for their sparky and sensitive turns. Taki Mumladze — who also co-wrote the screenplay — stars as Tina, an introverted young woman who needs to rent a room from a stranger, for reasons that become increasingly clear, and fascinating, as the story continues.

Extroverted party girl Megi (Mariam Khundadze) is straight-talking and abrupt, initially seeing Tina merely as a route to the rent. The Covid pandemic is in full force in Tbilisi, with bars presumably shut, so Megi’s crew drop round regularly for drinks, smokes and lively banter before curfew. Tina is slowly drawn into this world, and eventually confides in Megi about her troubled past, creating a touching bond.

It’s a charming,...

With eternal respect to Virginia Woolf, whose “A Room of One’s Own” clearly inspires the title of Ioseb ‘Soso’ Bliadze’s beautifully articulate miniature, even before a woman needs money and her own space to be able to pursue self-fulfillment, she needs to know she needs those things. Bliadze’s superbly performed, remarkably immersive Karlovy Vary competition entry is one such story of tentative, interior emancipation, described in the tiniest arcs of change: the width of a smile, the warmth of an embrace, the directness of a gaze. As such it is hardly cinema’s most tempestuous act of female empowerment, but the work of dismantling oppressive patriarchies, such as that which underpins modern-day Georgian society, needs both sledgehammers and subtler instruments.

The room in question is a poky box at the back of a narrow two-bedroom apartment in Tbilisi. The rent is 600 lari (about 200) per month, to be...

Georgian-German drama “A Room of My Own,” about a young woman looking for a female roommate in Tbilisi after her personal life implodes, has its team thinking about future reactions in the Republic of Georgia. But director Ioseb “Soso” Bliadze and actress/co-writer Taki Mumladze are “ready” to address subjects considered controversial in their home country, they tell Variety, from domestic abuse to same-sex relationships.

“We will fight for this film,” says Bliadze, returning to Karlovy Vary Film Festival after his 2021 release “Otar’s Death.” Now, “A Room of My Own” – a Maisis Peri and Color of May production – will vie for the festival’s Crystal Globe award.

“In our country, conservative voices are getting louder and louder, and our government is backing them up. That’s our answer to them.”

In 2020, Levan Akin’s “And Then We Danced,” featuring a gay love story, became the subject of violent mass protests.