Susan Sarandon Gets Karlovy Vary Lifetime Achievement Honor

COLOGNE, Germany – Oscar-winning actress and activist Susan Sarandon will receive a lifetime achievement honor, the Crystal Globe, at this year’s Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.

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Sarandon will attend the 47th Karlovy Vary festival, where she will also personally present the festival screening of the Duplass Brothers’ Jeff, Who Lives at Home, which stars Sarandon alongside Jason Segel and Ed Helms. Karlovy Vary will present Sarandon with her Crystal Globe for outstanding artistic contribution to world cinema at the festival’s closing ceremonies on July 7.

Sarandon will be the second Oscar-winning actress to be honored at Karlovy Vary this year. Helen Mirren will receive a Crystal Globe for her life’s work at the festival’s opening ceremonies June 29. At the festival, Mirren will present The Door from Czech director Istvan Szabo, who will also attend.

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Other directors coming to present their films at Karlovy Vary are Todd Solondz, who will screen Dark Horse; Mark Cousins with What Is This Film Called Love and The Story of Film: An Odyssey; Luis Minarro with 101: Manoel de Oliveira; Joachim Lafosse with Our Children; Amir Naderi with Cut and Ira Sachs with Keep the Lights On.

Karlovy Vary, the premier festival for the Central and Eastern European territories, will open with Good Vibrations, directors Lisa Barros D’Sa and Glenn Leyburn’s biopic about Terri Hooley, the Belfast record-store owner who was a key figure in Ireland’s punk rock scene. Woody Allen’s latest, To Rome With Love, featuring Penelope Cruz and Jesse Eisenberg, will close the Karlovy Vary festival on July 7.

For the first time this year, the festival will give a $12,600 (€10,000) prize to the best film in its Works In Progress section, which screens unfinished projects from Central and Eastern Europe. The jury that will pick the winner out of the 20 Works in Progress being screened includes Ivo Andrle of Czech distributor Aerofilms; Silje Nikoline Glimsdal of Denmark’s TrustNordisk and Amy Dotson of the Independent Filmmaker Project. The prize is being sponsored by Barrandov Studios, the Czech Republic largest film studios.

Barrandov are also backing Karlovy Vary’s new film industry event, the Czech Film Industry Week, which kicks off June 30. The event will include lectures, workshops and panel discussions. Another industry initiative is the new Pitch & Feedback program, which will see Czech filmmakers pitch their new projects to a group of international film professionals for input and feedback.