Karlovy Vary Reveals Central Stage & Book-To-Screen Projects

Karlovy Vary’s industry strand KVIFF Promises, has unveiled the films selected for this year’s upcoming KVIFF Central Stage showcase as well as eight books selected for its first edition of Book-To-Screen at KVIFF, its new initiative for books searching for film adaptation deals. 

The 11 upcoming titles selected for KVIFF Central Stage, which is launched in partnership with eight national film institutes across the region, include films from established filmmakers such as Nicolas Steiner, Antonio Lukich, Olga Chajdas and Cristina Groșan. 

The films are seeking co-production, financing, sales, distribution and festival premiere opportunities and will be showcased during an interactive talk on the Film Industry Main Stage on July 6. Participating projects will have access to exclusive post-production advantages through partnership with studios such as UPP and Soundsquare and are eligible for the €20,000 Eurimages Co-Production Development Award. 

Titles this year include: Flying Mountain from Swiss director Steiner; Ukrainian co-productions Screaming Girl from director Lukich and Noah from writer-director Marysia Nikitiuk; Czech film The Stones Are Rolling to Prague from Tomáš Hodan, about the preparations for the Rolling Stones’ big concert in Prague in 1990; Czech comedy A Few Branches Off by Tomáš Pavlíček; Romanian-Hungarian director Groșan’s upcoming mob drama Lesdenzero; Polish helmer Olga Chajdas’s upcoming female road movie Tribe; German artist Sebastian Fritzsch’s Trainrider; Slovenian writer-director Goran Vojnović’s adaptation of his own book Yugoslavia, My Fatherland; Slovak helmer’s Michal Blaško’s coming-of-age drama Cowgirl; and Austrian director Sebastian Brauneis’ boxing biography Hansi. 

Book-To-Screen at KVIFF is a new collaboration with the Frankfurt Book Fair, Moravian Library in Brno and Book World, supported by the PPF Foundation. Inspired by the successful Berlinale program, the showcase will spotlight eight books with strong screen potential, written by authors from Central and Eastern Europe, a region that KVIFF Industry Head Hugo Rosák says is still underrepresented when it comes to IP development and the systematic handling of literary rights. 

Producers seeking new material for film and television adaptations will have the opportunity to discover these literary works during an interactive talk show hosted by Niki Théron, Senior Manager International Projects and Film at the Frankfurt Book Fair, on July 7. 

This year’s book selection include: True Way Out, Patrik Banga’s memoir about growing up in a Roma community in Prague’s Žižkov neighborhood in the 1990s, which won the Magneisa Litera award for Best Debut in 2023; Playing Wolf, a folk-horror from writer and literary scholar Zuzana Říhová; Daniel Majling’s graphic novel The Zone; Moldovan author Iulian Ciocan’s dystopian satire Queen of Hearts; Ieva Dumberytė’s Lithuanian-set surreal novel Aspic Bistro; historical drama Cupid at the Kremlin Wall from historian Aka Morchiladze; Polish title The River Odyssey of Kora from Willow Meadow, ah children’s book by Adam Robiński; and Sophia Andrukhovych’s Amadoka, which starts in the war in the Donbas. 

The showcase will be complemented by an IP-focused producers’ think-tank and networking session. 

“Our long-term ambition with Book-to-Screen at KVIFF is to become a true Central-Eastern European IP market that helps develop dialogue between the film and publishing industries and create a more transparent environment for adaptation rights in the region,” said Rosák in a statement. 

The 60^th edition of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival takes place July 3-11, 2026.