06.12.2025

Belgium shines at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival 2025 !

Five Belgian films will be featured at the Karlovy Vary Festival, including two world premieres.

Recognized as the most important film festival in the Czech Republic and one of the leading festivals in Central and Western Europe, Karlovy Vary is classified as an A-category festival. Each year, it showcases an international selection of approximately 200 fiction and documentary films across several competitive sections. The festival regularly welcomes renowned and influential filmmakers and attracts both industry professionals and the general public. Karlovy Vary is a key event for discovering emerging talent and celebrating auteur cinema.

Following the success of his first short film, Oil Oil Oil, which was selected for the International Competition at the Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival and screened at numerous festivals worldwide, Manoël Dupont will now present his first feature-length film, Before After, in its world premiere at Karlovy Vary in the Proxima Competition. The fiction short was produced by Les Films de la Récré and is internationally represented by Outplay Films. The film also received light production support from the Centre du Cinéma et de l’Audiovisuel.

Jérémy meets Baptiste.
Their shared baldness takes them to Istanbul,
where clinics claim to reverse the course of time.
Amid shifting winds and silent unrest,
they search for meaning in a city not their own.
Day by day, a fragile bond forms, in the hope of change.

As part of the Future Frames program, director Mila Ryngaert will present her graduation short film Karaocoeur, featured in the section FUTURE FRAMES: Generation NEXT of European Cinema. This will also mark the film’s world premiere.

Twenty-year-old Lucette works at a karaoke bar. Besides the bar’s song-happy customers, she is kept company by her fairy, who wants nothing but the best for Lucette. But careful! One evening, Diana enters the bar, and Lucette’s world is turned upside down. Is there a song on the karaoke list capable of describing the return of a long-lost love? And what about the fairy? Will she break her magic wand trying to help Lucette?

Following its world premiere at the Berlinale and an extensive festival run, On vous croitby Arnaud Dufeys and Charlotte Devillers will be screened in the Horizons section of KVIFF.

Today, Alice stands before a judge and there’s no room for error. She must speak up for her children, as custody is being called into question. Can she protect them from their father before it’s too late?

Also featured in this section is Kika by Alexe Poukine, selected earlier this year for the La Semaine de la Critique in Cannes.

While pregnant, Kika’s partner dies suddenly. Homeless, broke and heartbroken, she sets her priorities:
1. find money quickly
2. get out of trouble
Dirty panties, dildo belts and neurotic parents will help him. Against all odds.

Finally, the film Merckx, directed by Boris Tilquin & Christophe Hermans, will also be featured in the Horizons section of the festival.

Eddy Merckx is much more than a cycling champion; during his era of unprecedented sporting victories in the 1960s and 1970s, he embodied the fusion of the distinct cultures of Wallonia and Flanders in Belgium.

The Horizons section also includes co-productions supported by the Centre du Cinéma et de l’Audiovisuel: The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo by Diego Cespedes, co-produced by Wrong Men, and Vermiglio by Maura Delpero, co-produced by Versus Production.

The festival will take place from Friday, July 4 to Saturday, July 12, 2025, in Karlovy Vary!