In Karlovy Vary Film Festival competition entry “We Have Never Been Modern,” Czech director Matej Chlupacek takes on both the dangers of Utopian bubbles and the power of unbending faith in traditional gender concepts.

The story, set in a Slovak company town built by a visionary industrialist, takes place on the eve of World War II, as a murder mystery threatens to upset the idealized community. The factory director’s wife Helena, played by Eliska Krenkova, is an aspiring doctor who is soon to give birth. But her rosy future is suddenly darkened by the discovery of the body of a newborn intersex baby in the factory’s courtyard.

All these elements might seem like a heavy burden for a young indie filmmaker who eschewed film school and whose last effort at making a feature was a decade ago, “Touchless” – made when he was a 17-year-old debut writer-director.

But Chlupacek has hardly been hiding out working on screenplay drafts while doing odd jobs since then. Already an experienced multi-platform producer, he has been busy with Czech TV and streaming shows for years and is already in negotiations with a major platform for more.

His credits include the Czech version of international cable franchise “In Treatment,” and the 2020 crime thriller “Rats,” among other projects.

So Chlupacek’s bold choices in “We Have Never Been Modern” and his particular take on a historical what-if story are not as surprising as they might seem. The filmmaker clearly knows what he wants to do and how.

And Chlupacek’s approach to creating the world’s appearance is typical of his unconventional work.
“We shot on 35 and used miniatures,” he says. The distinctive look of the setting, inspired by real-life Czech footwear manufacturing mogul Tomas Bata and his modernist factory town built in Zlin during the pre-war years, was achieved after extensive testing with in-camera effects, he says.

“We are creating a city that doesn’t exist,” Chlupacek explains. A good part of the magic is handmade but VFX is another essential component, he says, adding, “We have an amazing colorist.” Between that expertise and the work of production designer Henrich Boraros, “We Have Never Been Modern” indeed achieves a look and feel that are remarkable.

With miniatures built on a 1:7 scale, Chlupacek was inspired by the once-common techniques of George Lucas’ Industrial Light & Magic on “Star Wars” or vintage Czech sci-fi master Karel Zeman. The miniatures were blended into set pieces built to human scale for actors to stand on and touch.
The team experimented with 3D rendering and other CGI techniques but, says the director, that method “never translated somehow to what I wanted.”

The filmmakers also did several test screenings, too – a phenomenon not yet common in the Czech Republic –  to be sure everything worked visually with audiences, Chlupacek says.

In addition, the project took four years to develop and cost nearly $3.7 million, a figure that’s also well beyond the norm for an independent feature in this territory.

Cinematographer Martin Douba contributed another level to the visuals, says the director, in a process he describes as highly collaborative.

“We intended to do a modern kind of historical film so we went with the approach of handheld camera so it would look like an indie film.”

As for the fraught period that the film takes place in, Chlupacek says he saw a parallel between modern times, in which it’s too easy to shut out danger signs from outside our comfortable homes, and those of Czechoslovakia’s First Republic.

“I think it’s very similar to the days we’re living in now, having these amazing lives, we’re not bothered directly by anything, and it’s really rosy. In 1937 it was the same – they didn’t know something tragic was coming. You’re watching someone who may not exist in the next year. Or they’ll have to change their way of living completely. That was something that really interested me.”

The first sign of cracks in the ideal life come with the discovery of the murdered infant at the factory – and the child’s intersex anatomy signals a path along storylines that are darker still.

“The intersex subject is very strong in the film,” says Chlupacek, “but it also represents something new that comes into the life of people who live according to their strict rules.”

Bucking the rules is something that’s always interested this filmmaker, he says, and a route he plans to continue to explore.

“I always wanted to provoke people,” he admits. “I always wanted to bring something that’s not theirs, and put it on the table and see how they react. And this amazing script by Miro Sifra reflected, I felt for the first time, something that I wanted to do.”
 

At a festival the size and stature of the Czech Republic’s Karlovy Vary, new discoveries are a daily occurrence. But it is rare that at festival’s end, one of the most excitingly buzzy emergent names should be that of a filmmaker who died 37 years ago and who has languished in relative obscurity – certainly in the Anglophone world – ever since. And yet here we are, at the tail end of an 11-film Yasuzo Masumura retrospective – the biggest of its kind ever mounted at an international film festival – that has proved, in a word, revelatory. 

It’s not just in terms of blowing the dust from this extraordinary, unjustly overlooked filmmaker’s catalog, but also in the broader sense of being an exemplary model for how to connect a vibrant, youthful regional audience to global film history. There is a classic film fan born every minute, but in Karlovy Vary this year, you could feel it happen in real time during the screenings of Masumura’s  “A Cheerful Girl” (1957), “Hoodlum Soldier” (1965), “Spider Tattoo” (1966) and so on.  

The selection, curated by Karlovy Vary programmer Joseph Fahim, represents only the tip of the 60-title iceberg of Masumura’s filmography and is remarkable for how, across nearly a dozen features, the director so rarely repeats himself. Encompassing the melodrama, satire, buddy comedy, erotica, exploitation, courtroom, espionage (industrial and political), coming-of-age and romance genres, presented in crisply restored widescreen black-and-white and gorgeously punchy, vivid technicolor, the program is diverse, but never less than wildly entertaining.

As such, it feels like Fahim has hit on a kind of retrospective Holy Grail, but the story of it started in a car journey en route to the Venice Film Festival last year with Karlovy Vary artistic director Karel Och. “Karel drives and I just tag along from Prague to Venice,” Fahim tells me as we sit on the terrace of the Thermal Hotel amid the happy hubbub that drifts up all day and most of the night from the outdoor bars in the park beyond. “We talk about everything in our lives and then we reach a point where we’re bored out of our minds because it’s nine hours, and Karel has to stay awake. So it’s like what to talk about now? Let’s talk about retrospectives.”

“Just before Venice last year I had watched two Masumura films: ‘The Black Test Car’ and ‘Giants and Toys,’” he continues. “And then, quite by coincidence, we discovered that next year is Masumura’s centenary. We thought, probably there’s going to be a rediscovery of this guy, so we should do it before everyone else does. So I just want to say, on the record, next year when everyone’s doing Masumura retrospectives – we did it first!”

Fahim is joking but there is a palpable sense on the ground that Karlovy Vary has earned the right to the association. “The guy has never got much attention – there was a Cahiers interview long ago and [critic] Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote a piece on him in the late ’90s – but because of the lack of literature there is still so much to unpack and uncover about him,” says Fahim. “There are still some films of his that I haven’t been able to get hold of, and I am dying to see.”

Of course, the key question is why Masumura has remained under the radar for so many, for so long. “Unlike Kurosawa, unlike Mizoguchi, Oshima and Imamura, his movies were not travelling outside Japan, and so he was simply dismissed,” says Fahim. “What I can’t fathom is why someone like [Seijun] Suzuki who is also very genre, very cool, also dealt in exploitation elements, why was he a lot more famous?… Masumura’s politics were just so pointed, he has such visual style and there’s a very strong philosophy behind each film, whether it’s about the militarization of Japan or women’s relationship to sex, or sex as a tool of individualization… I feel that neglect says more about the prejudices of film culture and film academia than it does about the films.”

It’s certainly true that the movies themselves are cinephile heaven, packing in a great deal of subtext and context but remaining, as the packed houses at the festival have attested, endlessly accessible. How has Fahim, who also curated the last two big Karlovy Vary retrospectives, managed to land on such a successful formula for promoting often obscure films to the general Karlovy Vary audience? He shrugs in wonder. “Look, we didn’t expect to have the success we did with the Youssef Chahine and World Cinema Foundation retrospectives. The Karlovy Vary audiences are just open to new things – it has happened with every single retrospective we’ve done. There’s a great hunger for discovery here. Really, I think there are few places in the world like it. And also there is something very contemporary about Masumura, very accessible, and our audiences are perceptive and smart enough to respond to that.”

It has to have been gratifying for the Kadokawa Corporation, the rights holders who have supplied Karlovy Vary with all the prints, many of them in pristine, newly restored form. “We got lucky with Masumura and the Japanese,” confirms Fahim, “because they really know how to take care of their films.” “It’s not that we wanted to steal the momentum from everyone else,” Och demurs to me later in reference to next year’s anniversary. “Kadokawa suggested themselves that Karlovy Vary would be the launching pad for a retrospective that they hope will go wide next year. And – with a representative here who has attended all 33 of the screenings all the way through – they have been really satisfied with the way it has been promoted and attended.” 

Prior to that car journey, Och himself had never seen any Masumura films. “Joseph made the whole programming team watch several of his movies throughout the year and we all just fell in love,” Och says. “It was a whole world we had never been aware of. I mean, how can a film about two car companies fighting for a prototype [‘The Black Test Car’] be that exciting and that complex? Masumura is proof that mainstream cinema can be so progressive and bold.” 

For Och, the impressive audiences are a result of a more than a decade’s groundwork. “I felt there was a hole in the market in 2004/5 when I took over the retrospective strand. We started off with Sam Peckinpah and John Huston and Cassavetes, for which we also brought sizeable delegations and related celebrities. And it started to send the signal that classic films are celebrated in Karlovy Vary, long before Joseph joined the band, with his vast knowledge of cinema that is not the usual suspects.” A festival’s classic focus can be “like a lighthouse,” Och says, recalling the “humbling moment when the Institut Lumière in Lyon contacted us about our Larisa Shepitko retro. Then we knew we were really part of a circle of festivals and cinematheques that we really admire, to which we can make our small contribution.”

Having had this level of success with something so apparently out of leftfield, how does Och see the future of Karlovy Vary’s classics segments shaping up? “It’s easy to get excited about being a place that ‘discovers’ something,” he muses. “But we have to be careful not to expand it too much at the expense of all our other sections – that could be the death of it. Still, probably next time, it’s not going to be another Milos Forman tribute, much as we love him, because that is now just too expected. And so I just look forward to another drive to Venice with Joseph…”

Photographer Libuše Jarcovjáková – no stranger to Prague’s nightlife in the 1970s and 80s, as depicted in upcoming documentary “I’m Not Everything I Want to Be” – has already earned comparisons to a certain American icon.

“Libuše had this big exhibition in France in 2019 and on the radio they said: ‘She is like Nan Goldin of Czechoslovakia,’” says producer Lukáš Kokeš. Klára Tasovská directs.

Recently, Goldin has been the subject of Laura Poitras’ Oscar-nominated “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed.”

“The very first time we pitched this project, our tutor, ‘Navalny’s’ editor Maya Daisy Hawke, said: ‘That’s funny. My husband [Joe Bini] is actually editing a film about Goldin next door,’” laughs Kokeš.

“In order to be authentic, Goldin would go to live with sex workers or addicts. Libuše did the same thing. Her most unique series of photographs comes from this LGBTQ+ club in Prague. That’s when she discovered sexual relationships with women.”

“In an unfree regime, she sought islands of freedom: gay clubs, night shifts in factories, pubs, Vietnamese hostels. Places where people, from her point of view, lived without inhibitions. She wanted to belong to them and to feel alive,” adds Tasovská.

“The intimacy of these photographs stems from the fact that she photographed what she lived. Parties, sexual exploration, doubts and depression.”

Jarcovjáková’s unconventional take on communist Czechoslovakia, as well as Tasovská’s commitment to compose the film entirely out of her photos, impressed the jury at Karlovy Vary, resulting in the project receiving the Works in Progress Post-Production Development Award.

Somatic Films (Czech Republic), Nutprodukcia (Slovakia) and Mischief Films (Austria) are producing.

“There are no talking heads here, no experts,” says Kokeš.

“Klára had access to all the photos Libuše has ever taken and to the diaries she has been writing since she was 17. You can really look through her eyes and be inside of her head.”

“We almost forget we are looking at motionless photographs,” she adds.

“Still, I had no idea how challenging this whole process would be. Making a film from photos is just as complex and time-consuming as making an animation.”

Now in her 70s, Jarcovjáková entrusted the director with “complete freedom,” says Tasovská, allowing her to deliver a “highly universal and contemporary story of female emancipation.”

“Libuše refused to have children, to adapt to social norms. She has been living with a female partner for the last 30 years. It’s about finding your identity and finding freedom, but also about living according to your own ideas,” notes Kokeš.

“This conscious decision by a woman not to be a mother, not to want children, often evokes a peculiar astonishment. Even in a liberal society. But where does this notion even come from? Libuše speaks openly about these questions,” adds Tasovská.

Stressing that nothing was off the table when making the film, including the mentions of Jarcovjáková’s abortions, one of which almost cost her her life.

“These are universal themes that still hold relevance today. Especially when we look at the tendencies to encroach upon women’s rights in Poland or in the U.S.”

It’s one of the reasons why, despite its period setting, the team believes in the relatability and timeliness of their film.

“Libuše is a role model. Not only for me, but potentially for everyone,” says Tasovská.

“She is 71 years old now and yet she still hasn’t been properly discovered. It’s not unusual, as the history of photography has been dominated by men,” says Kokeš.

“We are talking about a local photographer, but we are also asking questions everyone can understand: How can you break through as a female artist in a male-dominated field? How do you accept your ‘otherness’? How do you develop a good relationship with your body, even though according to some ‘standards’ it’s not considered classically beautiful?”

He adds: “It was obvious to us that instead of it being some boring documentary, this film should have a timeless touch. After all, Libuše started taking selfies long before it was cool.”

Bulgarian crime story “Blaga’s Lessons” by Stephan Komandarev scored the top prize and $25,000 at the 57th Karlovy Vary Film Festival on Saturday, capping a week of celebrating art film, stars and bold global work.

With sold out screenings ranging from Russell Crowe introducing “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World” to rare Japanese masterworks by Yasuzo Masumura and a tribute to actor Daniela Kolarova, Czech audiences proved once again to be hungry for every kind of film they cannot experience at any other venue.

The Crystal Globe competition special jury prize, along with $15,000, went to “Empty Nets,” a German-Iranian gritty love story directed by Behrooz Karamizade.

Best director honors went to Babak Jalali, an Iranian-British director-writer, whose noirish black-and-white feature “Fremont,” co-written with Carolina Cavalli, chronicles the quest of an Afghan refugee fighting for a night’s sleep and possibly love. The film stars real-life Afghan refugee Anaita Wali Zada in a commanding debut performance.

The top actress prize went to Eli Skorcheva for her role in “Blaga’s Lessons,” which also won the ecumenical jury prize, while Herbert Nordrum took the actor prize for his exceptional performance in “The Hypnosis,” a Swedish-Norwegian-French tale of digital startup ambitions gone off the rails.

“The Hypnosis,” directed by Ernst De Geer, also won the Europa Cinemas Label as best European film at the festival, as selected by a jury of three exhibitors from the Europa Cinemas Network.

Audiences voted “The Edge of the Blade,” a French dueling tale with a feminist take by Vincent Perez, their top choice, while the Proxima section jury gave the nod to “Birth,” a South Korean relationship drama by Yoo Ji-young, with the Proxima special jury prize going to Saurav Rai’s India-Nepal entry “Guras,” an enchanting Darjeeling girl-and-her-dog tale.

The two Czech films in the main competition, “We Were Never Modern” and “A Sensitive Person,” each garnered interest, the first for its unique visual style and take on an intersex detective story, the other for its bracing, chaotic road movie ethos.

More than 10,000 visitors packed into Karlovy Vary cinemas this year – a crowd roughly equal to last year’s – to see 185 films, with 36 world premieres at 445 screenings.

The fest’s Eastern Promises section screened a robust collection of works in progress, incorporating training and coaching programs with Feature Launch, First Cut + and other industry development projects, granting prizes to first-time filmmakers and those breaking out work onto the global stage.

The fest film market showcased 27 film projects across three programs to 942 film professionals including buyers, distributors and festival programmers.

57th Karlovy Vary Film Festival Winners

Grand Prix Crystal Globe

“Blaga’s Lessons” (Bulgaria, Germany)

Directed by Stephan Komandarev

Special jury prize

“Empty Nets” (Germany, Iran)

Directed by Behrooz Karamizade

Best director

Babak Jalali, “Fremont” (U.S.)

Best actress

Eli Skorcheva, “Blaga’s Lessons” (Bulgaria, Germany)

Best actor

Herbert Nordrum, “The Hypnosis” (Sweden, Norway, France)

Special jury mention

“Dancing on the Edge of a Volcano” (Germany, Lebanon)

Directed by Cyril Aris

Proxima grand prize

“Birth” (South Korea)

Directed by Yoo Ji-young

Proxima special jury prize

“Guras” (India, Nepal)

Directed by Saurav Rai

Special jury mention

“Brutal Heat” (Czech Republic, Slovakia)

Directed by Albert Hospodarsky

Ecumenical jury grand prize

“Blaga’s Lessons” (Bulgaria, Germany)

Directed by Stephan Komandarev

Ecumenical jury commendation

“Citizen Saint” (Georgia, France, Bulgaria)

Tinatin Kajrishvili

FIPRESCI prize

“The Hypnosis” (Sweden, Norway, France)

Directed by Ernst De Geer

FIPRESCI prize, Proxima section

“Imago” (Poland, Netherlands, Czech Republic)

Europa Cinemas Label

“The Hypnosis” (Sweden, Norway, France)

Directed by Ernst De Geer