Fifty-year-old Murad’s life is shaken to the core when he learns that his younger brother is gay. Murad would like to support his brother, but their traditional Muslim family is against it. As a result, he finds himself subjected to pressures from all sides – from his father, who has close ties to the local imam, and from his brother’s circle of friends as well. He would like to help everyone, but as he slowly falls into a spiral of conflicts and mounting difficulties, he finds that he, too, is in need of help. Another integral part of this family drama is the theme of migration and dialogue – not just between different religions, but within communities themselves. For his fourth feature film, director Nader Saeivar collaborated with Jafar Panahí, who contributed as producer and editor.
The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (KVIFF) on Tuesday unveiled the lineup of its main Crystal Globes competition, the Proxima competition section and the Special Screenings program for its 60th edition and 80th anniversary edition, including Hijamat, a competition movie from Iranian director Nader Saeivar (The Witness), which was produced and edited by Cannes Palme d’Or 2025 winner and Oscar nominee Jafar Panahi (It Was Just an Accident), who is set to again face trial in Iran on charges of “propaganda against the regime.”
Across the lineup, cineastes can find stories about gay and lesbian life, the Ukraine war, as well as such topics as suicide and trauma.
The fest in the Czech spa town, whose 2026 edition will be running July 3-11, also unveiled its competition jury, made up of Joachim Trier co-writer and two-time Norwegian Oscar nominee Eskil Vogt (Sentimental Value, The Worst Person in the World), Amanda Nell Eu (Tiger Stripes), a filmmaker based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Justin Chang, film critic at The New Yorker and NPR’s “Fresh Air,” Czech sound designer, producer, composer and educator Pavel Rejholec, producer Nadia Turincev, who recently launched her solo company Sento Films to produce “unrealizable” films.
Meanwhile, the Proxima jury brings together Estrella Araiza, the general director of the Guadalajara International Film Festival and Cineteca UDG, producer Dirk Decker, co-founder of Hamburg-based Tamtam Film, Devika Girish, editor at Film Comment magazine and a talks programmer at the New York Film Festival, Jakub Felcman, “a Czech screenwriter, festival organizer, film critic, creative producer, director, and qualified plumber,” and Lithuanian director and screenwriter Marija Kavtaradze (The Visitor).
‘Hijamat,’ courtesy of KVIFF
This year’s double anniversary allows KVIFF to “look back at the rich past of an event established shortly after the end of World War II, but also to examine how closely the current programming team’s view of world cinema’s evolution resonates with the pioneering work of their predecessors, both past and recent,” said artistic director Karel Och. The nearly 40 titles in the main program “boast extraordinary geographical diversity,” he emphasized. “The exclusive presence of Myanmar and Colombia in the Crystal Globe competition naturally connects across a six-decade arc with the progressive decision of one of the festival’s founders and long-time director of programming, A. M. Brousil, to focus intensively on the then-young and undiscovered non-European cinemas.”
And Och highlighted that the filmmakers presenting their work this year “cross boundaries, both spiritually and physically.” After all, “the countries of production or filming locations of these projects often differ – even continentally – from the filmmakers’ countries of origin,” which is “far more commonplace today than in the past.”
Concluded the artistic director: “One of the defining characteristics of the films in this year’s main program is the directors’ impressive effort to comprehend the diversity and complexity of the world through firsthand confrontation, and through a relentless search for the relationship between the artistic and the political, the intimate and the societal.”
Veterans of world cinema and first-time directors are both featured at KVIFF this year. Indeed, the fest highlighted 15 first-timers across its Crystal Globe Competition, the Proxima Competition and the Special Screenings section.
Competition film Hijamat, starring Kida Khodr Ramadan, Moritz Bleibtreu and Nastassja Kinski, focuses on Murad, 50, whose life is “shaken to the core when he learns that his younger brother is gay,” according to a synopsis. “Murad would like to support his brother, but their traditional Muslim family is against it. As a result, he finds himself subjected to pressures from all sides – from his father, who has close ties to the local imam, and from his brother’s circle of friends as well. He would like to help everyone, but as he slowly falls into a spiral of conflicts and mounting difficulties, he finds that he, too, is in need of help. … For his fourth feature film, director Nader Saeivar collaborated with Jafar Panahí, who contributed as producer and editor.”
Among the Proxima films are the likes of Isabelle Tollenaere’s debut fiction feature Paris Paris, Mein Freund der Pornostar by Austrian director Rosa Friedrich, Italian-U.S. co-production Rain Catcher, set in London, from Michele Fiascaris, and Japanese director Shuntaro Uchida’s Incinerator (Shokyakuro).
‘My Friend the Pornstar,’ courtesy of KVIFF
Meanwhile, the Special Screenings lineup includes the world premiere of The Story of Documentary Film – 1980s, the doc series from director, and KVIFF veteran, Mark Cousins that has debuted other films at other big festivals earlier this year.
British filmmaker Rebekah Fortune’s (Just Charlie) Learning to Breathe Underwater, starring Rory Kinnear and Maria Bakalova, which was presented at Cannes in the BFI’s Great 8 Showcase last year, is also part of the Special Screenings. “Eight-year-old Leo lives with his dad and a giant shark, which crashed through the roof of their home,” reads its synopsis. “Yes, you read that correctly. The shark is Leo’s best friend, to whom he can confide all his secrets. He can’t really talk to his dad; he must be missing mum, who’s been gone five years now. Then Anya, the au pair, bursts into their lives, and their world suddenly changes.”
Also unspooling in the Special Screenings program will be Robert Richardson: The White Devil from director Jana Hojdová about the famous cinematographer (Kill Bill: Vol. 1 & 2, Inglourious Basterds) and Quentin Tarantino collaborator. “What started as a student exercise and master’s degree project soon evolved into a creative partnership and personal friendship,” explains a synopsis. “The more improbable the film’s premise seems, the more fascinated we become by its portrait of a distinctive and uncompromising artist, three-time Academy Award winner, and acclaimed collaborator of such directors as Oliver Stone, Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino.”
‘Robert Richardson: The White Devil,’ courtesy of KVIFF
Check out the full KVIFF 2026 lineup unveiled on Tuesday below.
CRYSTAL GLOBE COMPETITION
3 nedelje posle / 3 Weeks After
Director: Miroslav Terzić
Serbia, Bulgaria, 2026, 94 min, World premiere
Cherni pari za beli noshti / Black Money for White
Director: Kristina Grozeva, Petar Valchanov
Bulgaria, Greece, 2025, 94 min, World premiere
Chica Checa
Director: Šimon Holý
Czech Republic, France, Slovak Republic, 2026, 96 min, World premiere
Cinco años, cuatro meses / Five Years, Four Months
Director: Esteban Hoyos García, Juan Miguel Gelacio Ramírez
Colombia, USA, 2025, 83 min, World premiere
Detrás de la lluvia / Behind the Rain
Director: Valeria Sarmiento
Chile, 2026, 97 min, World premiere
Gæsten / The Guest
Director: Mads Mengel
Denmark, 2026, 99 min, World premiere
A Happy Family
Director: Jan-Eric Mack
Switzerland, 2026, 120 min, World premiere
Hijamat
Director: Nader Saeivar
Germany, 2026, 103 min, World premiere
The Lion at My Back
Director: Tonia Mishiali
Cyprus, Luxembourg, Greece, 2026, 106 min, World premiere
Pipes
Director: Karim Kassem
Lebanon, 2025, 112 min, World premiere
Prameň / Only Beautiful Things to Look At
Director: Ivan Ostrochovský
Slovak Republic, Czech Republic, Hungary, 2026, 90 min, World premiere
Thit-thee Khu / Fruit Gathering
Director: Aung Phyoe
Myanmar, France, Czech Republic, 2026, 97 min, World premiere
PROXIMA COMPETITION
33 krokov / 33 Steps
Director: Anna Domček, Šimon Domček
Slovak Republic, Czech Republic, 2026, 71 min, World premiere
Camionero / Truck Driver
Director: Francisco Marise
Spain, Argentina, 2026, 84 min, World premiere
Contra la Naturaleza / Against Nature
Director: Axel Bertha
Mexico, 2026, 86 min, World premiere
Enas olokliros anthropos schedon / A Whole Person Almost
Director: Efthimis Kosemund-Sanidis
Greece, Bulgaria, Germany, Cyprus, Romania, 2025, 111 min, World premiere
Homo Sive Natura
Director: Giovanni C. Lorusso
Italy, 2026, 115 min, World premiere
The Ink-Stained Hand and the Missing Thumb
Director: Yashasvi Juyal
India, 2026, 120 min, World premiere
Mein Freund der Pornostar / My Friend the Porn Star
Director: Rosa Friedrich
Austria, 2026, 94 min, World premiere
Milovník, nie bojovník / Lover, Not a Fighter
Director: Martina Buchelová
Slovak Republic, 2026, 108 min, World premiere
Paris Paris
Director: Isabelle Tollenaere
Belgium, 2026, 78 min, World premiere
Rain Catcher
Director: Michele Fiascaris
Italy, United Kingdom, 2026, 109 min, World premiere
Shokyakuro / Incinerator
Director: Shuntaro Uchida
Japan, 2026, 97 min, World premiere
Sitni lopovi / Petty Thieves
Director: Mate Ugrin
Croatia, Germany, France, 2026, 106 min, World premiere
SPECIAL SCREENINGS
Bára Basiková / Bára – Diary of a Rockstar
Director: Helena Třeštíková
Czech Republic, 2026, 97 min, World premiere
Dvě deci tuše / A Pint of Ink
Director: Ester Geislerová
Czech Republic, Slovak Republic, 2026, 83 min, World premiere
Kdyby se holubi proměnili ve zlato / If Pigeons Turned to Gold
Director: Pepa Lubojacki
Czech Republic, Slovak Republic, 2026, 110 min
Khaneh doost injast / The Friend’s House Is Here
Director: Maryam Ataei, Hossein Keshavarz
Iran, USA, 2025, 96 min, International premiere
Learning to Breathe Underwater
Director: Rebekah Fortune
United Kingdom, Netherlands, Ireland, 2026, 95 min, World premiere
Město otců / City of Fathers
Director: Zdeněk Tyc
Czech Republic, Slovak Republic, Poland, 2026, 100 min, World premiere
Mistryně / Everything As It Should Be
Director: Bohdan Karásek
Czech Republic, 2026, 101 min, World premiere
Morten
Director: Ivan Pavljutskov
Estonia, Lithuania, 2026, 101 min, World premiere
Robert Richardson: The White Devil
Director: Jana Hojdová
Czech Republic, USA, 2026, 105 min, World premiere
The Story of Documentary Film – 1980s
Director: Mark Cousins
United Kingdom, 2026, 120 min, World premiere
To Die to Live
Director: Yuliia Hontaruk
Ukraine, Latvia, Slovak Republic, 2026, 116 min, World premiere
Vyvolený / Gregorius, the Chosen One
Director: Tomasz Mielnik
Zpráva pro Minervu 2 / A Report for Minerva 2
Director: Miroslav Krobot, Lubomír Smékal
Czech Republic, 2026, 69 min, World premiere
