The Karlovy Vary Film Festival and PvNew have teamed up to honor Francine Maisler, one of the world’s most respected casting directors, whose recent credits include “Dune: Part Two,” “The Bikeriders,” “Challengers,” “Civil War” and “Joker: Folie à Deux.”
Maisler has worked on more than 70 feature films and is a recipient of 15 Artios Awards from the Casting Society of America, including for “Marriage Story” in 2020 and “Don’t Look Up” in 2021. As well as working with director Denis Villeneuve on “Dune: Part Two,” “Dune,” “Arrival” and “Sicario,” her other films include Terrence Malick’s “Tree of Life” and “Knight of Cups,” and Alejandro González Iñárritu’s “The Revenant” and “Birdman.” In 2022, she won a Primetime Emmy Award for her work on HBO’s “Succession.”
As part of its homage, Karlovy Vary will hold a special screening of one of the films which Maisler worked on. Maisler will also give a public master class, in which she will reflect on her career so far.
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“The profession of casting director has gained increasing attention over the past years, as evidenced among other things by the fact that, starting in 2026, the Academy Awards will include an Oscar for casting,” KVFF’s executive director Kryštof Mucha said.
Karlovy Vary also revealed Tuesday that it is to hold a retrospective of films inspired or adapted from the work of novelist Franz Kafka, which will mark the 100th anniversary of his death.
Among the titles included in the retrospective will be Orson Welles’ “The Trial,” Martin Scorsese’s “After Hours,” Federico Fellini’s “Interview,” Roman Polanski’s “The Tenant,” Steven Soderbergh’s “Kafka,” Ousmane Sembene’s “The Money Order” and Masao Adachi’s “Artist of Fasting.”
KVFF’s artistic director Karel Och and Lorenzo Esposito, who are co-curators of the program, said: “For decades, Kafka’s oeuvre has functioned as a continuing provocation to filmmakers. It is as if he were slyly challenging them to attempt to capture as authentically and intensely as possible the elusive nature of his formulations, of his narratives, of the realities he has crafted and the feelings of apprehension he elicits, yet also of the comic situations he has created.”
This month, director Agnieszka Holland began principal photography in the Czech Republic and Germany on her Kafka biopic “Franz,” as revealed exclusively by PvNew.
Among other announcements made at a press conference Tuesday were that the President’s Award for outstanding contribution to Czech cinema will be presented to actor Ivan Trojan, and that the festival will screen a newly restored print of František Vláčil’s “Shadows of a Hot Summer,” which won the festival’s Crystal Globe for best film in 1978.
The festival also revealed that Future frames – Generation NEXT of European Cinema, a program for young filmmakers organized by Karlovy Vary and European Film Promotion, will be once again supported by talent agency UTA, Range Media Partners and Allwyn.
