The Mosquito Net’s producer Luis Miñarro and director Agustí Vila (top); Best Actor co-winner Mateusz Kosciukiewicz
Agustí Vila’s psychological family drama La Mosquitera / The Mosquito Net won the Crystal Globe at the 2010 Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, held in the Czech spa city. [Karlovy Vary 2010 list of winners.]
Starring Geraldine Chaplin, Emma Suárez, Eduard Fernández, Marcos Franz, and Alex Batilori, The Mosquito Net chronicles the travails of a well-to-do family whose members suffer from an inability to communicate with one another.
In a non-speaking role, Geraldine Chaplin plays the family matriarch suffering from Alzheimer’s. On the Karlovy Vary site, Chaplin is quoted as saying that Vila’s The Mosquito Net screenplay was one of "the three best scripts I have ever read."
The Special Jury Prize went to Jan Sverac’s fantasy tale Kooky, a Czech-Danish co-production in which a stuffed bear (that’s Kooky) attempts to return to his rightful owner — a boy suffering from asthma and with a lot of imagination — after he’s thrown away by the boy’s mother. In order to tell his tale, Sverac used handheld puppets set against a natural environment.
Rajko Grlic was the Best Director for the Serbian-Croatian-Slovenian co-production Just Between Us. Set in Zagreb, Grlic’s film deals with a man unable to stick to one single romantic/sex partner.
French performer Anais Demoustier was chosen Best Actress for her role in Olivier Coussemacq’s psychological French thriller Sweet Evil.
Two Polish actors took home the Best Actor Award: Mateusz Kosciukiewicz and Filip Garbacz, who play two brothers gone astray in Pawel Sala’s Polish family drama Mother Teresa of Cats.
Fardin Saheb Zamani’s Iranian There Are Things You Don’t Know and Dmitri Mamulia’s Russian Another Sky received special jury mentions.
Additionally, Russian director Nikita Mikhalkov, whose Burnt by the Sun won the 1994 Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, and Czech director Juraj Herz received Crystal Globes for "outstanding artistic contribution to world cinema."
And finally, Jude Law was given the festival’s President’s Award.
American producer Ron Yerxa acted as jury president.
Karlovy Vary Film Festival site.
Photos: Karlovy Vary Film Festival