Slovak 'Lover, Not a Fighter' Wins Karlovy Vary Proxima
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- Martina Buchelová directed "Lover, Not a Fighter" as her first feature, a Slovakian-Czech co-production built from loosely connected, inconsistently chronological episodes about a drifting 20-year-old named Andrej
- Adam Kubala stars as Andrej, a semi-estranged slacker who moves in with his grandmother (Jaroslava Pokorná), quits drinking cold turkey, and pines for shy, sharp-witted Miša (Michaela Kostková)
- "Lover, Not a Fighter" won the Proxima competition at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, described as an unusually crowd-pleasing winner of the showcase normally given to more experimental works
- Buchelová's script resists meme-style humor in favor of well-written, sometimes uncomfortably squirmish conversation, drawing characters who are angry, eccentric or unmoored without resorting to banal generational generalizations
- The film identifies something "truthful and empathetic" in GenZ quirks and blind spots while also faulting their elders for setting a "less chaotic and self-involved example," per the review
- Cinematographer Adam Mach's limber, unpolished camera evokes the roaming spontaneity of smartphone shooting, reinforcing the freewheeling construction and deadpan comic tone that drives the film
Why it matters: Buchelová's debut marks a rare crowd-pleasing Proxima win at Karlovy Vary, a section typically reserved for more adventurous, experimental work — signaling a distinctive new Slovakian voice on the festival circuit with a GenZ romance that trades meme humor for genuine, uncomfortable conversation.
