The 53rd Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (June 29 - July 7) wrapped up last Saturday with its annual awards ceremony. The festival honored three prominent cinematic figures for their outstanding artistic contribution to world cinema; American writer-director-producer Barry Levinson, British actor-composer-model Robert Pattinson and Czech actor Jaromir Hanzlik.

Radu Jude’s latest film “I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians” won the Grand Prix - Crystal Globe . The Special Jury Prize went to Argentinian director Ana Katz for her film “Sueño Florianópolis”, which also won the Best Actress Prize for its lead actress Mercedes Morán as well as the FIPRESCI Award.

Olmo Omerzu won the Best Director award for “Winter Flies”. Moshe Folkenflik won best actor honors for his role in  “Redemption”. “Jumpman” by Russian director Ivan Tverdovskiy' and “History of Love” by Slovenian director Sonja Prosenc received Special Jury Mentions.

Best documentary honors were given to “Putin's Witnesses” by Russian director Vitaly Mansky, while “Walden” directed by Swiss director Daniel Zimmermann picked up  the special jury prize.

In the festival's East of the West competition, the Grand Prize went to Elizaveta Stishova for her film “Suleiman Mountain”. A special jury prize also was awarded to Hungarian director Laszlo Csuja's for his film “Blossom Valley”, while  the Audience Award went to Barry Levinson for his film “Rain Man”(1988).

The 53rd edition of the festival witnessed the participation of a number of Arab films, some of them were included in official competitions such as the Lebanese film "The Swing" by Cyril Aris, that competed in the documentary films competition along with the Egyptian documentary "Dream Away" by Egyptian director Marwan and German director Johanna Dumke. "Amal" directed by Egyptian director Mohamed Siam was presented in the section "Another View".

The ‘Work in Progress’ award at the festival was won by the Lebanese director Ahmad Ghossein for his project titled “All This Victory”. The competition is devoted to projects from Central and Eastern Europe, the Balkans, former Soviet Union countries, and, for the first time this year, the Middle East.

Amir Ramses, the Artistic Director of El-Gouna Film Festival attended the festival and held a series of meetings with a number of filmmakers, producers, distributors and directors, to select films for the 2nd edition of El-Gouna Film Festival.