Festivals

After a difficult pandemic edition of the world’s oldest and most glamorous film festival in 2020, the dolce vita may just be back. The 78th edition promises the return of the world’s media, international filmmakers and Hollywood stars.

It was 1946, right after World War II, when Margarita Carmen Cansino attended the just created Karlovy Vary Film Festival. It took place in a spa city in what was then Czechoslovakia, that had been saved from the bombs and remained as beautiful as when rich families visited it by the thousands at the end of the 19th century to spend their vacations.

There was both high anxiety and high anticipation before this year’s Cannes Film Festival, still the most important event in the calendar of global cinema. The 74th edition kicked off July 6, two months later than usual, and after skipping one year, amid safety concerns due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

With his new film, The Worst Person in the World, the acclaimed Danish-born Norwegian Joachim Trier (Louder Than Bombs, starring Isabelle Huppert, The Oslo Trilogy) continues to impress critics and viewers with his melancholy meditations about love, ambition, memory, and identity. The movie, which world-premiered in competition at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, offers a subtle portrait of a young woman named Julie, who is very much a product of her times.

Egyptian Omar El Zohairy’s seriocomedy, Feathers, won the Nespresso Grand Prize at the Critics’ Week, the Cannes Film Festival’s section dedicated exclusively to first or second films. The 2021 program, which marks the sidebar’s 60th edition, featured 13 world premieres.

A love letter to cinema, shot across the US, Iran, Chile, China and Thailand by seven of today's most vital filmmakers, The Year of the Everlasting Storm is a timely anthology about the impact of the global pandemic on various countries and cultures. The anthology, which is world-premiered here in the Special Screenings sidebar will be released domestically by A24.