The 2018 Karlovy Vary International Film Festival revealed its first big guest earlier this year when it was announced that Texas filmmaker Richard Linklater (Boyhood) would be attending the fest as part of a tribute dedicated to the Austin Film Society.
Now, the festival has another major US filmmaker to welcome: director Barry Levinson, who will be awarded a Crystal Globe for Outstanding Artistic Contribution to World Cinema at the 2018 edition of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.
Levinson’s films include his breakthrough, Baltimore-set Diner starring Kevin Bacon and Mickey Rourke, the Oscar-winning Rain Man, for which Levinson also won a Best Director Academy Award, and Wag the Dog, a 1997 political satire with Robert De Niro and Dustin Hoffman that is as relevant today as it was twenty years ago.
Levinson’s impressive body of work also includes the timeless baseball classic The Natural, starring Robert Redford, Young Sherlock Holmes, Good Morning, Vietnam, Bugsy, Discosure, and Sleepers.
Originally from Baltimore, Levinson’s hometown would become the setting for many of his films following Diner: Tin Men, with Richard Dreyfuss and Danny DeVito, the Oscar-nominated Avalon, and Liberty Heights, with Adrien Brody.
Levinson’s post-2000 output hasn’t been as acclaimed as his previous body of work, but the inside-Hollywood satire What Just Happened, which screened at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in 2008, was underrated, and the coastal horror film The Bay, the director’s first, deserved a wider audience.
And a trio of recent HBO TV biopics crafted by Levinson – You Don’t Know Jack, starring Al Pacino as Jack Kevorkian, The Wizard of Lies, featuring Robert De Niro as Bernie Madoff, and Paterno, with Pacino as Penn State football coach Joe Paterno, have all been first rate.
In addition to his Oscar win for Rain Man, Levinson has received four other Academy Award nominations, for Best Director for Avalon and Bugsy and Best Screenplay for Diner and 1979’s …and justice for all.
While the lineup of films for this year’s festival has been announced, guests are typically represented by their most recent work; Linklater could theoretically bring Where’d You Go, Bernadette, which would be a huge score for the fest (and a possible world premiere), while Levinson may be accompanied by Paterno, which just premiered on HBO in the states last month.
The director might also bring the acclaimed Rain Man, starring Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman, to the 2018 Karlovy Vary International Film Festival to celebrate its 30th anniversary.