The Karlovy Vary Film Festival

One of Europe's older film festivals, running since 1946 and held every year in early July. Its centre is the Thermal, a concrete block from the 1970s whose Grand Hall takes the premieres, with more screens in the spa hotels and cinemas strung along the river. The programme mixes a competition of new films with a wide pick of the year's international festival titles, restorations and retrospectives, and most screenings carry English subtitles. The crowd is young and largely Czech, camping on the lawns and along the riverbank, which gives the week the feel of a music festival with colonnades and hot springs attached.

What you actually see

• The Grand Hall - a thousand-seat concrete auditorium where the premieres screen.
• The queues - the ticket system that shapes everyone's day from early morning.
• Screens around town - spa halls and small cinemas pressed into service along the river.
• The lawn camps - tents and sleeping bags on every patch of grass by the water.

When to go

Early July, for as many days as your ticket plan supports. Passes and tickets go on sale in advance and the popular titles disappear within minutes of opening. Screenings run from morning to well past midnight. Book a bed months ahead or plan to commute from a nearby town, because the whole valley fills.

Honest expectations

Accommodation prices in Karlovy Vary multiply for the week and sell out early, which is why so many people sleep outside. The queue and app system rewards those who build their whole day around it, and casual visitors end up seeing whatever is left. If you came for the spa town itself, this is the worst week of the year to see it quietly.

Nearby

The colonnades and hot springs of the town, and the wooded Ohre valley around it.