The Karlovy Vary Film Festival is a place where everyone feels at home – from the brightest stars of the world cinema and Hollywood staying at Grand Hotel Pupp, to the student back-packers, who arrive in numbers every year and, in anticipation of some last-minute ticket availability, squat in the hallways of Hotel Thermal, housing the festival headquarters, as well as five festival film theatres. This unassuming hospitality was elegantly emphasized in the festival film vignettes, shown before each screening. ...

This year laureates of the Life-Time Achievement Crystal Globe were Jude Law and Nikita Mikhalkov. Obviously, no director could create the frenzy of a handsome male star like Jude Law, although Mikhalkov stirred up a commotion of a different kind at the press conference he gave before the screening of his latest film, Burnt by the Sun 2. Exodus ("Utomlennye solntsem 2: Predstoyaniye", 2010), a sequel to his Oscar-winning Burnt by the Sun (1994). Czech journalists were asking their questions with deference to one of the greatest Russian directors, but even in the most polite wording of their queries one could still discern bewilderment with Mikhalkov's latest work, or at least a thinly veiled surprise as to what burning need might have prompted his revisiting the film's nearly-perfect predecessor. Mikhalkov spoke at length, without really answering the questions, as – in a statesmanlike way – he was busy addressing overtly and covertly the Russian journalists in the audience. Therefore the real purpose of his lengthy monologues remained obscure for those unaware of the ongoing standoff at the Union of the Russian Filmmakers. But for those who have come to love Russian cinema thanks to Mikhalkov's wonderful films from the 1970s and 1980s, it was painful to watch how he attributed his latest film's lack of media popularity to the attempts of Russian critics to character-assassinate him. Reminiscing about Slave of Love ("Raba liubvi", 1976), Unfinished Piece for Mechanical Piano ("Neokonchennaya pyesa dlya mekhanicheskogo pianino", 1977), Oblomov (1980), Dark Eyes ("Ochi chernye", 1987), Burnt by the Sun (1994) and Twelve (2007), I caught myself feeling guilty for judging so harshly Burnt by the Sun 2 – a film that has dragged on for so long that the very idea of it had turned into a cold turkey. ...

Unfortunately, both of the two most tooted Russian-language films at the festival were a disappointment. This was to be expected of Nikita Mikhalkov's Burnt by the Sun 2, since sequels rarely work. However, as far as his engagement with traumatic moments from history is concerned, Mikhalkov enlists these in his film for no other apparent reason (the film looks like a collage of references to famous WWII films from the Soviet era) than to showcase his already grown-up daughter Nadia (the beguile star from the first film) and himself. ...