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The 22nd edition of the Transilvania International Film Festival kicked off Friday night in the city of Cluj-Napoca with the international premiere of Northern Comfort, a comedy directed by Icelandic filmmaker Hafsteinn Gunnar Sigurðsson, and with a tribute to the film’s star, Timothy Spall.

The famed British character actor, known for his roles in Mike Leigh’s Topsy-Turvy and Mr. Turner, Cameron Crowe’s Vanilla Sky, Edward Zwick’s The Last Samurai, Tom Hooper’s The King’s Speech and the Harry Potter films, received this year’s lifetime achievement award at the festival’s opening gala.

The Icelandic-uk-German co-production Northern Comfort is part of the massive Nordic Focus at the festival this year, with more than 40 films from Norway, Iceland, Denmark, Finland and Sweden, as well as live music performances and cine-concerts. Some of the Nordic highlights include Ruben Östlund’s 2022 Palm d’Or winner Triangle of Sadness, Lars von Trier...

The Romanian film festival runs June 9-18.

Transilvania International Film Festival has announced the line-up for its 22nd edition which takes place in Cluj-Napoca, Romania.

The official competition is made up of 12 features while the documentary strand, entitled What’s Up Doc?, will screen 10 titles. All of the films are from first and second-time directors.

Among the competition selection is Ion Bors’ Carbon which premiered in San Sebastian’s New Directors strand last year, having won the festival’s Wip Europa Industry and Wip Europa awards the previous year. The dark comedy, surrounding the Transnistrian conflict of the 1990s, is...

Il Boemo, a biopic on 18th-century composer Josef Myslivecek, from director Petr Václav (The Way Out) took the top prize, for best Czech Film, at the 2023 Czech Lions awards.

The period drama, about the forgotten composer, was a frontrunner going into the Lions, as the Czech Republic’s official Oscar contender (it wasn’t nominated). In the end, Il Boemo won six Czech Lions, including best director for Vaclav and honors for best set design, costumes and makeup. Accepting the best film trophy, Il Boemo producer Jan Macola, thanked writer-director Václav for spending 12 years working on the project.

Il Boemo premiered in competition at the 70th San Sebastian film festival last year.

Michal Kern took best actor honors for his performance in Arved, another period biopic about a forgotten figure from Czech history, from director Vojtech Masek. In the drama, Kern plays Jiri Arved Smichovsky, a Czech occultist and Nazi collaborator.

Geoffrey Rush and Benicio Del Toro will receive special awards at the 2022 Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, Kviff organizers announced on Tuesday. The two actors will both receive their awards during the closing ceremony on July 9 in the festival’s namesake spa town outside Prague in the Czech Republic.

Rush will receive the Crystal Globe for Outstanding Artistic Contribution to World Cinema, an award that in the past has gone to Michael Caine, Julianne Moore, Jude Law and Judi Dench. Three of Rush’s films – “The King’s Speech,” “Quills” and “Shine,” for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor – will be screened at the festival.

Del Toro will receive the President’s Award for making “a fundamental contribution to the development of film and cinema.” “The Usual Suspects” and his Oscar-winning turn in “Traffic” will be screened for the occasion. Ethan Hawke received the President’s Award last year.

Film festival unveils 27 world premieres and three international premieres.

Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (Kviff) has announced the line-up of 33 features for its 56th edition, which includes Jake Paltrow’s Ukraine-shot Adolf Eichmann feature June Zero.

The Czech festival will take place from July 1-9 and the selection includes 27 world premieres, three international premieres and three European premieres.

Scroll down for full list of titles

The 12 titles in the Crystal Globe Competition are all world premieres, with the exception of Anna Kazejak’s Fucking Bornholm; Sophie Linnenbaum’s The Ordinaries; and Jonás Trueba’s You Have To Come And See It – all international premieres.

As classical Hollywood cinema scholars David Bordwell and Kristen Johnson pointed out, the traditional American film plot is driven by a “goal-oriented protagonist.” That’s not necessarily the case with European art cinema, which may explain why U.S. audiences have such a hard time connecting to movies where it’s not clear what the hero wants. They won’t have that problem with “Domestique,” an obsessive-compulsive Czech-Slovak body-horror film — easily the most uncomfortable first-date movie Central Europe has produced since “Wetlands” — that centers on two characters who’re as goal-oriented as they come: hard-core Roman (Jiří Konvalinka) is a training maniac, working overtime to recover from a cycling injury, while his health-nut wife Charlotte (Tereza Hofová) wants a child, keeping meticulous track of her fertility calendar.

An audaciously alienating anti-romance from first-time director Adam Sedlák, “Domestique” hardly ever leaves the sterile modern apartment where this high-strung couple co-exists. Otherwise...

Dating back to 1948, the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival is one of the oldest film festivals in the world and has become one of Eastern and Central Europe’s most prominent events for cinema. The festival, which takes place in Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic every July, has now announced the program of films for its Official Selection, East of the West, and Documentary competitions.

The Official Selection is composed of 12 films – ten world premieres and two international premieres – and is led by renowned Romanian filmmaker Radu Jude’s latest film I Do Not Care If We Go Down In History As Barbarians, which plays as an investigation on the large idea of nationality, and esteemed Argentinian director Ana Katz’s film Sueño Florianópolis, a family drama structured with elements of both trite and humorous storytelling. Among them, the line-up includes the complex romance The Fireflies Are Gone (by Canada’s...

Line-up includes films from Radu Jude, Ivan Tverdovsky and Ana Katz.

The 53rd Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (June 29 - July 7) has unveiled the competition titles in its Official Selection, East of the West and Documentary sections.

Scroll down for full line-ups Main competition

The 12-strong main competition will comprise ten world premieres and two international premieres, including ”I Do Not Care If We Go Down In History As Barbarians” from Romanian filmmaker Radu Jude, whose 2012 title Everybody In Our Family won best film at the Sarajevo Film Festival.

Other films in competition include Ana Katz’s family drama Sueño Florianópolis,...