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Jiri Bartoska, celebrated Czech actor and president of Karlovy Vary Film Festival since 1994, has died aged 78.

Bartoska’s death was confirmed by a festival spokesperson; he had been suffering from cancer for the last 11 years.

The festival has blacked out its social media profile on X, and posted a photo of Bartoska with a black heart.

Projects from Bulgaria, Belgium and Macedonia have picked up prizes at the When East Meets West (Wemw) international co-production meetings in Trieste.

The main prize, the Wemw Development Award, provided by the local regional fund Friuli Venezia Giulia Audiovisual Fund (Fvg), went to Bulgarian producer Martichka Bozhilova and director Galin Stoev for Endless Garden, which is looking for a Belgian co-producer.

The €1.1m dramedy will be theatre director Stoev’s debut feature and already has Berlin-based Thomas Kufus’ zero one film and Media onboard as partners.

Endless Garden had previously been pitched during the Sofia Meetings last March.

A special mention was given by the jury of Eave’s Kristina Trapp, Torino Film Lab’s Mathieu Darras and the Berlinale’s Nikolai Nikitin to the Czech/Slovak documentary comedy Never Give Up by Matej Minac.

A new prize this year, sponsored by Belgium’s Filmmore with €5,000 worth of post-production services, went to the...

Benelux is the regional focus for Trieste’s fourth edition of its When East Meets West (Wemw) co-production forum (January 20-22, 2014) being held during the Trieste Film Festival.

Eight of the 22 projects being presented in public pitches at the forum, which runs Jan 20-22, will be projects from the Benelux countries - Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg - looking for potential co-producers and distributors from Italy or Eastern Europe.

They include new projects from Luxembourg’s Bady Minck, 1313 Dante’s Emperor, and The Netherlands’ David Verbeek, Full Contact, as well as the Belgian documentary film-makers Daniel Lambo, Eternal Silence, and Gilles Coton, Meet Enver Hadri.

Wemw’s project manager Alessandro Gropplero told ScreenDaily that this year’s call for projects had attracted a record 200 entries - 23 from the Benelux, 32 from Italy and 145 from Eastern Europe - with 140 fiction film projects and 60 documentary projects.

An international jury then selected 10 fiction and 12 documentary projects in development to be pitched...

Northern Arts Entertainment

This well-crafted, low-key Czech movie chronicles the gradual effects of Hitler's invasion of Czechoslovakia on a Jewish family. Sensitive ensemble performances and good period reconstruction add up to a moving tragedy with some buoyant human moments. Northern Arts Entertainment will open the film Wednesday at New York's Quad Cinema.

"All My Loved Ones", based on real characters, roughly breaks into two parts. The first hour consists of anecdotal episodes about the eclectic Silberstein family, the "loved ones" of the title, as Nazi troops hover near the Czech borders. The last 30 minutes is much sadder, detailing the family's involvement with British stockbroker Nicholas Winton (Rupert Graves). Similar to Oskar Schindler, Winton used his influence to save Czech children from systematic murder by the occupying Nazis.

The hourlong setup paints a broad picture of Jewish life before the invasion. One uncle is a well-known classical violinist. Another, a huckster, makes a living with a traveling Buffalo Bill Roadshow -- horses, covered wagon and all. The main character, Jakub (Josef Abrham), is a doctor who employs a downtrodden German gardener, who later comes to personify the Nazi attacks on the family.

Drama results from a split in the family. Some fear a Nazi massacre and plan to emigrate. Others claim that as the Jews have committed no crime, Hitler will spare them. Early scenes are eccentric and amusing, but poignancy sets in when history takes a darker turn. Period reconstruction is good, and houses, cars and clothes look suitably worn in, rather than straight off the rack.

Director Matej Minac previously directed documentaries, and old newsreels are cut into the story. The most moving scene is actually real-life footage from a 1998 BBC television program that shows Winton meeting some of the 669 people he saved.