Karlovy Vary’s Promises Industry Section Announces Award Winners
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- Selamlik (Sweden/Denmark), directed by Jerry Carlsson and written by Khaled Alesmael, won the €20,000 Eurimages Co-production Development Award for a love story the jury said was 'made impossible by war.'
- Reminiscence (Ukraine), directed and written by Anastasia Tykha and produced by Darya Bassel, took a special €20,000 Eurimages award plus the Connecting Cottbus Award, with both juries citing its exploration of 'loss, grief and survival' in today's Ukraine.
- They Bloom at Dawn (North Macedonia), directed and written by Angela Dimeska, won the €10,000 MIDPOINT & KVIFF Development Award for a film about family relationships amid environmental crisis.
- KVIFF showcased 38 film and series projects across Works in Development, KVIFF Central Stage, KVIFF Talents, and the inaugural Book-to-Screen at KVIFF, a Frankfurt Book Fair collaboration presenting 8 Central and Eastern European literary titles.
- Market-access awards went to Polish producer Monika Matuszewska of Confirmation (Rotterdam Lab) and Czech producers Tomáš Hrubý and Eva Váchová for Cowgirl and A Few Branches Off (Marché du Film Producers Network).
- Ukrainian co-productions Screaming Girl and Noah appeared in the Book-to-Screen lineup alongside titles from Czech Republic, Georgia, Lithuania, Poland, Moldova, and Slovakia.
Why it matters: Two of the three largest cash prizes went to projects explicitly about war-driven displacement, and the Ukrainian Reminiscence swept both a special Eurimages award and a Connecting Cottbus market slot — concrete industry backing for Ukraine-themed storytelling mid-conflict. The first-ever Book-to-Screen program also wires KVIFF's pipeline directly to Frankfurt Book Fair's IP ecosystem for Central and Eastern European literature.
