The 58 th Karlovy Vary Film International Film Festival kicked off with a very personal milestone, commemorating 30 years since the event was taken over by the programming team of Jiří Bartoška and the late journalist Eva Zaoralová. The veteran actor, now 77, gave the festival cause for concern last year when health problems threatened to keep him away from the event. This year, however, Bartoška was the main focus of the traditionally baroque opening ceremony, taking us back to 1994 with memories of Nelson Mandela, TV’s Friends , cinema’s Pulp Fiction, and the first iterations of PlayStation and Bluetooth technology.
Related Stories News Karlovy Vary To Fete Viggo Mortensen, Clive Owen & Daniel Brühl While Nicole Holofcener & Steven Soderbergh Set To Present Films At Fest News Oleh Sentsov Captures The Front Line In Ukraine's Defense Against Russia's Invasion In Karlovy Vary-Bound Doc 'Real' - First Look Trailer There followed a lengthy tribute to Bartoška at work, welcoming a veritable cavalcade of stars; names so famous that for a few minutes, it was possible to forget the festival’s unfortunate tendency to stick with Hollywood stars a tad too long into their wilderness periods (Mel Gibson and Johnny Depp spring to mind). The ensuing dance number was a disappointment, however, seemingly a hasty recap of previous delights that saw a grinning man with a squid’s head and another with a chainsaw stalking a woman through a frantically hoofing cavalcade of .
