S Viswanath

If Crystal Globe is the flagship Competition Section of Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, its sister sibling – Proxima Competition is an equally dedicated platform of the film festival providing a window to the formally adventurous works from emerging festoon of filmmakers.

Specifically focusing on trailblazing filmmaking metier of emerging auteurs seeking to catch the discerning eye of critics and cinephiles alike, with array of eclectic films spanning geographies, waiting to be discovered and acknowledged along with established practitioners, sees the segment’s spread a festoon of dozen films to discover and deliberate upon.

One of the hallmarks of Proxima Competition is that the curated selections instead of following conventional narrative formulas, prioritizes aesthetic and thematic experimentation, which works, in the process, challenges audiences besides bridging the gap between artistic exploration and social or political commentary. Further one can also notice that the pick of films that make up the competition field more often than not features filmmakers who go on to define the future of international cinema.

The curated and critically culled section sees some take the docu-feature mode as also similar innovative hybrid forms including experimental path being kneaded into the thematic narratives ensuring a multifarious cinematic experience to engage in. So without much ado let’s take a tour of what Proxima in store for us. It is in this connection it is pertinent to start with the Indian entry as we enumerate on the ensemble collection.

This time around, the Indian representation in the Proxima Competition dozens sees Hindi language film The Ink-Stained Hand and the Missing Thumb the two-hour flick by Yashasvi Juyal previously known for his short The Last Rhododendron (2020).

Once again with hometown Uttarakhand as the canvas for his film Yashasvi Juyal magical realism romantic saga, set in a quiet toll booth station, that centres around Rajji and her colleagues leading a rather dour and routine life until the arrival of a fellow migrant worker Santosh, who incidentally is Rajji’s beau. His unexpected death in a truck accident while working in his booth turns the booth into a site of sorrow, until, 24 hours later, Santosh mysteriously reappears – alive.

While charting the lives of the community of migrant workers navigating the quiet rhythms and rigours of their diurnal labour, migration and waiting, the film, spotlights on how Rajji finds herself haunted by traces of her beau’s return following his death, and, in the process, blurring the boundaries between grief and reality.

The film taking inspiration from folklore, landscapes and migration histories of Uttarakhand, vivaciously and vividly combines elements of romance, and social observation to chronicle a disappearing world and the people left behind by it.

Incidentally, Subhadra Mahajan’s Second Chance had featured in the Proxima Competition in 2024, while the Nepali film Gura by Saurav Rai the previous year (2023). These apart over the course of the Karlovy Vary Film Festival’s run has seen several Indian films featured such as Sandhya Suri’s Santosh (2024), Payal Kapadia’s Cannes Winner All We Imagine as Light (2024) and Girls Will Be Girls (2024) by Suchi Talati.

It is to be seen whether Yashasvi Juyal will find success from among the other 11 contestants in fray to pick the Proxima Award.

Among other films in fray include the 86 min Mexican film Against Nature (Contra la Naturaleza) by Axel Bertha. The film with its compelling sound design, hypnotic visual style, and rejection of traditional storytelling, is said to provide an absorbing and immersive cinematic experience for audiences.

The 115 min Italian film Homo Sive Natura by Giovanni C Lorusso revolves round the community of indigenous inhabitants in the remote forests of eastern Cambodia whose otherwise tranquil life is bestirred with the arrival of 40-year-old businessman in the guise of a tourist seeking to discover the life of his ‘brothers,’ while, in reality, he is surreptitiously collating information for possible expropriation of their land.

Incinerator or Shokyakuro the 97 min Japanese fare from Shuntaro Uchida based on a short story by Japanese author Kaori Ekuni (nicknamed the “female Murakami”), involves the coming of age of ten-year-old difficult school kid with a strange obsession of tossing objects into the school’s incinerator.

Slovak Republic’s 108 min Lover, Not a Fighter a debutant fare from Martina Buchelová is described as a celebration of cinematic freedom that is humorous and inventive in terms of both style and narrative spotlights on a teen with a fetish to climb trees after a peg or two and seeking to reform . .

Rather suggestively titled My Friend the Porn Star (Mein Freund der Pornostar) the 94 min Austrian film by debutant Rosa Friedrich takes audiences on a playful sojourn into the world of porn one that is a flourishing depersonalised, omnipresent industry.

Belgian debutant director Isabelle Tollenaere’s 78 min Paris Paris revolves around three men – a Chinese, Congolese & Palestinian sharing an apartment in Paris knit by their shared experience of exile bespeaks of the issues surrounding the immigrants caught between their real home and the adopted one.

Petty Thieves or Sitni lopovi the 110 min debut Croatian film by Mate Ugrin is a metaphorical showcase on the lives of the marginals given to thieving despite holding onto a decent job in the hope for a better morrow.

Italian director Michele Fiascaris’ debut 109 min Rain Catcher invites his audiences into the nocturnal and voyeuristic universe of a paranoic photographer given to capturing the Capital City London’s hidden niches and nooks in the dark, rain drenched nights exploring the city’s dismal underbelly.

Truck Driver or Camionero by the Argentinian director Francisco Marise is a 84 min debutant tour-de-force roadie movie inviting audiences into the inner world of the film’s titular character and his ilk, as to how they lead their lives at motels, on the side of road, in tire shops, savouring the present moment while longing for the company of their loved ones far away.

A Whole Person Almost (Enas olokliros anthropos schedon) the 111 min Grecian debut film by Efthimis Kosemund-Sanidis takes on a mystical note as a son arrives to claim his late father’s inheritance on a remote island whose initial indifference gives way as he interacts with the local community and learning of his father’s past which rather differs from his own memories of his parent.

33 Steps the 71 min Slovakian debut feature by the director duo of Anna & Šimon Domček charts the life of a traumatised man, who surviving a serious heady injury following a racially motivated assault still suffers the aftermath of that fateful day. The film takes on a fiction and documentary mode to narrate its thematic concern.