59. KVIFF WINNERS AND PRIZES AT THE KARLOVY VARY INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2025

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The 59th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, a non-specialized festival with two competitive categories, took place from July 4th to July 12th 2025. It was organized by Film Servis Festival Karlovy Vary, a.s., with Kryštof Mucha as the executive director, Karel Och as its artistic director and Petr Lintimer as the head of production.

The 60th Karlovy Vary IFF will be held from July 3rd to July 11th 2026. On July 12th 2025, the festival’s juries presented awards for the best films at the closing ceremony of the 59th Karlovy Vary IFF.

CRYSTAL GLOBE COMPETITION

“This festival has been proving to me for years that it makes all the sense in the world. Thank you to Aleš Palán, who wrote a brilliant book that allowed us to enter that crazy world. It’s probably the greatest honour I’ve received as a filmmaker, and I appreciate it very much,” said Miro Remo, accepting the award from Stellan Skarsgård.

BEST DIRECTOR AWARD – EX-AEQUO

Vytautas Katkus for the film The Visitor / Svečias
Lithuania, Norway, Sweden, 2025

Nathan Ambrosioni for the film Out of Love / Les Enfants vont bien
France, 2025

PROXIMA COMPETITION

CRYSTAL GLOBE FOR OUTSTANDING ARTISTIC CONTRIBUTION TO WORLD CINEMA
Stellan Skarsgård, Sweden

FESTIVAL PRESIDENT’S AWARD FOR CONTRIBUTION TO CZECH CINEMATOGRAPHY
Jiří Brožek, Czech Republic

FESTIVAL PRESIDENT’S AWARD

Vicky Krieps, Luxembourg / Germany
Dakota Johnson, United States of America
Peter Sarsgaard, United States of America

NON-STATUTORY AWARDS

THE ECUMENICAL JURY AWARD

GRAND PRIZE OF THE ECUMENICAL JURY

Rebuilding
Directed by: Max Walker-Silverman
USA, 2025

COMMENDATION OF THE ECUMENICAL JURY

Cinema Jazireh
Directed by: Gözde Kural
Turkey, Iran, Bulgaria, Romania, 2025

EUROPA CINEMAS LABEL AWARD

Sbormistr / Broken Voices
Directed by: Ondřej Provazník
Czech Republic, Slovak Republic, 2025

FIPRESCI AWARD

The FIPRESCI award for the best film in the Crystal Globe Competition

Out of Love / Les Enfants vont bien
Directed by: Nathan Ambrosioni
France, 2025

The FIPRESCI award for the best film in the Proxima Competition

Before / After / Avant / Après
Directed by: Manoël Dupont
Belgium, 2025

WINNERS OF KVIFF EASTERN PROMISES 

KVIFF Central Stage, Works in Development – Feature Launch & Focus Queer, Works in Development – KVIFF Talents

KVIFF Eastern Promises, the festival’s Industry section and film market, has the rewarding mission of bridging the gap between talented filmmakers and their potential co-production partners, festivals and audiences.

In addition to the established Works in Development – Feature Launch & Focus Queer, and a third edition of KVIFF Talents, this year’s Eastern Promises introduced a new Pop Up Series Incubator small-screen pitching session. A key programme innovation, the KVIFF Central Stage is a brand-new showcase focused on established directors and Central European co-productions, organised and curated in cooperation with selected national film institutes from the region.

“Every country in Central Europe has something unique to showcase, but even experienced filmmakers often struggle to close financing. The support structures here are still relatively fragile. Our hope is that by curating projects in close collaboration with national film institutes, we can offer producers and investors a selection they can trust, and ultimately help unlock co-financing with greater confidence. At the same time, we want to spark more awareness and collaboration between producers in the region. There’s a lot of potential for working together, and this format helps make those connections visible,” Hugo Rosák, the Head of the KVIFF Film Industry Office, commented. 

A total of 40 film and series projects were showcased this year, and the winners are:

Eurimages Co-production Development Awards

Eurimages Co-production Development Award

The jury has decided to award the 20,000 EUR cash prize for further development, sponsored by the Eurimages fund, to Battalion Records (Romania), directed and written by Ștefan Bîtu-Tudoran and produced by Diana Caravia.

Jury statement: “We are pleased to award the Co-production Development Award to a bold debut that confronts the decay of culture. Because sometimes, to make people listen, you must turn things upside down – and this absurdist heist comedy does so with rebellious energy.”

Eurimages Special Co-production Development Award

An additional prize was donated by Eurimages to support a particularly promising Ukrainian project. The jury has decided to award a special 20,000 EUR cash prize for further development to In Vacuo (Ukraine), directed and written by Yelizaveta Smith and produced by Eugene Rachkovsky.

Jury statement: “We are proud to award this Ukrainian feature debut set in Odessa. The film explores the universal impact of loss and how absence shapes both identities and communities, highlighting the importance of remembering before it’s too late.”

in Development – Feature Launch & Focus Queer

MIDPOINT & KVIFF Development Award

This year, KVIFF showcased nine projects that have gone through development and mentoring within the MIDPOINT – Feature Launch programme and five projects from the MIDPOINT – Focus Queer programme, designed to foster diversity in storytelling and provide crucial support to filmmakers in the realm of queer narratives.

Jury statement: “A film narrative is typically driven by characters, yet it can also take the form of a spatial and temporal fluid—shaped by its own color, form, and tone. We have chosen to highlight a charming film project in which human unease plunges into an absurd labyrinth where anxiety peers out from the corners of humor.”

Connecting Cottbus Award

Statement: “We were really taken with this haunting and unsentimental story of a dinosaur and his broken tools of communication, and we were happy to find out there may still be someone at the other end of the line for him.”

Rotterdam Lab Award

Statement: “Considering the right and accurate timing, their career and the potential of their projects in development, as well as the potential for internationalisation of their work, but also the conception of production, ambitions and growth, we invite Ondřej Lukeš to attend Rotterdam Lab 2026.”

Marché du Film Producers Network Award

Cannes Marché du Film Producers Network representative Yago Mateo has chosen Michelle Brøndum Hauerbach, producer of Soyboy (United Kingdom) and Genovéva Petrovits, producer of Democracy: Work In Progress (Hungary, Czech Republic, Germany) as the winners. The winners will participate in the Marché du Film and Producers Network during the next Cannes Film Festival.

A total of 1055 film producers, film buyers, film sellers, distributors, film festival programmers, representatives of film institutions, and other film professionals were accredited. 494 accredited film professionals came to the festival from abroad. A total of 40 films and projects in development or production across 5 platforms were showcased to a total of 103 buyers and distributors and 115 film festival programmers.