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The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival will this year present its Crystal Globe award for outstanding contribution to world cinema to UK director Ken Loach and his regular screenwriter Paul Laverty, organisers said on Tuesday. The pair’s most recent success was I, Daniel Blake, which won at Cannes last year. The festival will also present a newly restored version of The Shop on Main Street by Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos, which was the first Czechoslovak film to win an Oscar, and pay tribute to screenwriter and director Jiří Brdečka, co-writer of Lemonade Joe. The 52nd edition of the Karlovy Vary festival begins on June 30.

Over 135,000 viewers attended screenings at this year's Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. The festival offered 200 films, including 21 world premieres, and more than 500 screenings took place. The festival in the West Bohemian spa town also welcomed over one thousand film producers, distributors and other film professionals. The budget of the 51st edition of the Karlovy Vary Film Festival amounted to 135 million crowns, which is approximately the same as last year. The tickets and festival passes sales revenue amounted to some 5 million crowns.

The 50th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival closed with an awards ceremony on Saturday night. The Crystal Globe for best film went to the Hungarian film It's Not the Time of My Life, shot by the director Szabolcs Hajdu in his own home with the members of his own family and his friends. Hajdu also received the Best Actor Award. Zuzana Mauréry received the Best Actress Award for the film The Teacher by Jan Hřebejk. The audience's prize went to the American movie Captain Fantastic.

The prize for the best film of the East of the West Competition was awarded to a quasi-autobiographical debut by a Georgian director Rusudan Glurjidze House of Others and the Grand Prix for Best Documentary Film went to LoveTrue by an Israeli director Alma Har'el.

Czech actress Jiřina Bohdalová and American screenwriter and director Charlie Kaufman received The Festival President’s Award.

Cinemas in Prague and Brno will screen films presented at the 51st Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. The festival's annual Official Echoes get underway this Saturday in the Aero and Světozor cinemas in Prague and in la Scala cinema in Brno. People will have a chance to see 25 films, including the winner of the festival's main competition, until July 17. The festival in Karlovy Vary comes to a close on Saturday night.

The 51st edition of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival is slowly drawing to a close, with the eight-day event due to climax with a glitzy awards ceremony on Saturday evening. What films are being tipped for the top prizes at the country’s biggest film event? And how has this year’s Karlovy Vary been in general? I put those questions to Ian Willoughby, who is at the festival in West Bohemia.

A Czech mining village divided over plans that could see it wiped off the map is the focus of Pustina, or Wasteland, a hugely ambitious HBO series that has just been previewed at the Karlovy Vary film festival. The eight-part drama evokes real locations in North Bohemia, such as the Jezeří Chateau surrounded by surface mines, and I asked Pustina co-producer Tomáš Hrubý (whose previous credits include Burning Bush) how closely it reflected actual communities threatened with extinction.

French actor Jean Reno (The Big Blue, La Femme Nikita, Les Rivières pourpres) on Monday is attending the 51st Karlovy Vary International Film Festival underway in the spa town in western Bohemia. Mr Reno, the Czech News Agency reported, is currently in Prague for the filming of a new production called Adventurers, directed by Stephen Fung. On Monday, Reno is to accept the Festival President’s Award and is to present a special screening of the cult film Léon by director Luc Besson. In the 1994 film Mr Reno portrayed the title character, a hit man, in New York City.

The Karlovy Vary film festival kicked off on Friday night with the much-anticipated world premiere of Anthropoid, a big-budget movie starring Hollywood actors that recreates the daring assassination of Nazi governor Reinhard Heydrich in Prague in 1942. The gala event was attended by the movie’s stars and its director Sean Ellis. Ian Willoughby sent this report from Karlovy Vary.

To regular visitors to the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, interpreter Helena Koutná is an extremely familiar face. Koutná has been appearing on stage alongside some of the world’s biggest movie stars at the festival for two decades now and is known for her excellent work and ability to cope smoothly with any situation. When we caught up just prior to this year’s KVIFF, I asked what had initially drawn her to interpreting.

The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival continues on Sunday with another 50 screenings including the premiere of a new documentary about legendary Czech rock and pop band Lucie. Journalists are also due to meet with actor Willem Dafoe; later he is to introduce a special midnight screening of The Last Temptation of Christ directed by Martin Scorsese (Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, Gangs of New York).