Lovers Are Fighters: Two Debuts from Karlovy Vary
From Karlovy Vary, critic Isabel Jacobs focuses on two debut films from the Proxima Competition, the “summer noir” Petty Thieves, which won the FIPRESCI prize for the competition, and a “laugh-out-loud portrait of growing up,” Lover, Not a Fighter.
The lonely hero of Mate Ugrin’s Petty Thieves, Rio (Gavrilo Jović), has a lot on his plate: kitchen shifts at a seaside hotel, caring for his sick grandfather, wild boars destroying the family garden, the seductive pull of the local gay beach, and dealing with his grandmother’s new Latino lover. As if that were not enough, he supplements his meager income by stealing from wealthy tourists—a few wallets here, a piece of jewelry there. When his colleague Andrea (Tea Ljubešić)—who is immediately drawn to Rio when they first meet at the hotel canteen—catches him stealing at the beach one night, the two decide to team up and split the loot. From their alliance grows an unexpected, subtle tenderness, which feels more like a Platonic bond than erotic romance.
Winner of the FIPRESCI Prize in Karlovy Vary’s Proxima Competition, Petty Thieves is a formally audacious summer noir, set in a postcard resort town in Croatia. Ugrin’s impressive feature debut defies conventional expectations and cliché. It is a melancholic story of belonging and desire and the portrait of a generation trapped in economic hardship and loneliness. Ugrin’s marginalized heroes, who feel vulnerable and authentic, are caught by the camera within their everyday environment, mostly at work. They are framed by the hotel’s vast glass façades and windowpanes, turned into invisible barriers that separate the workers from the tourists whose pleasures they make possible without ever sharing in them.
In Petty Thieves, love is both the promise of a better future and an impossibility. The potential romance between Rio and Andrea doesn’t materialize, a beautifully restrained, never consummated possibility. Rio’s attraction to the gay beach also remains ambiguous. Is he drawn there to steal from the men he encounters, or to meet them? In one tender moment, a man tries to kiss him and Rio quietly turns his head away; later, he swims with a French tourist he meets along the wooded coastal paths where gay men gather for sex. Ugrin only alludes to Rio’s homosexual desire, creating a tender queer story that remains suspended in quiet tension. When Andrea eventually leaves the town behind, their farewell is heartbreaking. And he continues doing what he knows best: stealing.
One of the film’s final scenes, a Balkan disco party, ends with Rio being caught and violently beaten up. When he regains consciousness, he finally comes face to face with the wild boar that has haunted the film. It is an uncanny encounter between human and animal in a world out of joint, one marked by inequality and suffering. The result is a beautiful coming-of-age story and an unusual portrait of the Balkan coast, where the summer idyll gives way to melancholy and moral uncertainty—yet always full of hope for a better life.
Teenage love and the longing for happiness are also at the heart of Martina Buchelová‘s touching debut Lover, Not a Fighter, a laugh-out-loud portrait of growing up. Winner of the Proxima Competition, the film captures Gen Z’s emotional uncertainty and search for connection with authenticity and humor. Its protagonist, Andrej (Adam Kubala), is a charming loser who decides to stop getting wasted and move in with his grandmother. He is soon joined by his goofy cousin Peter, played to comic perfection by František Beleš. Andrej’s life changes when he falls head over heels in love with Míša (Michaela Kostková).
They first meet at a tram stop after Andrej has gone on a bender—and it’s love at first sight. They cross paths again when Míša’s father, convinced his daughter is a lesbian, sets her up with Andrej’s cousin Peter. The scene is one of the film’s funniest, full of pitch-perfect slapstick. His obsession with preparing for moving the entire family into a bunker becomes a running gag: “He wants us to live like there’s an apocalypse.” Meanwhile, Míša’s younger sister, a skater girl, falls in love with a scooter boy. A summer of carefree adolescence comes to an end when Andrej starts drinking again and cheats on Míša.
Buchelová’s film achieves much with modest means, including smartphone footage and cheesy intertitles— “About Andrej, who doesn’t hang out at tram stops anymore, but sits in a tree and lives with his grandma”—which gives her debut a charming if slightly amateurish vibe. Lover, Not a Fighter doesn’t want to be epic or universal; it’s a hyperlocal, intimate portrait of Slovak teenagers that feels unforced and fun. The entire room in Karlovy Vary was shaking with laughter, glued to Buchelová’s protagonists and their raw emotions. The warm humor of the dialogue, often improvised, also comes from what remains unsaid, relying on the great acting from a mostly first-time cast.
Lover, Not a Fighter unfolds like a video diary, a formally inventive Gen Z homage to the rom-com of the 1990s and 2000s. Beneath its lightness lies a darker story that insists that love requires fighting. A happy end is coming when all protagonists reunite at a school prom which culminates in a scene that has Andrej and Peter confront the small-town thugs who have occupied their grandmother’s flat. Before the great fight, the cousins share a moment of sincere tenderness: “I love you even though you’re an asshole.”
Only Andrej’s willingness to fight ultimately allows him to win Míša back. The film ends, fittingly, with a kiss. Despite touching on darker themes, such as alcoholism and family dysfunction, Lover, Not a Fighter remains irresistibly sweet: a feel-good debut from a promising filmmaker that shows with great passion that connection between human beings is still possible and that love is, after all, something worth fighting for.
Isabel Jacobs
© FIPRESCI 2026