Mark Cousins’ A Sudden Glimpse to Deeper Things, a study of Scottish artist Wilhelmina Barns-Graham (1912-2004), picked up July 6 the Crystal Globe of the 58th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (June 28 – July 6). The film, narrated by Tilda Swinton, is produced by Mary Bell and Adam Dawtrey of UK outfit Bofa Productions and sold by Reservoir Docs. The UK premiere of the film will be at Edinburgh International FF. Conic is handling the UK release in October 2024.
A Sudden Glimpse to Deeper Things is the first doc to win Karlovy Vary’s top gong since the initial award was granted in 1948 (the festival was founded in 1946). It is also the first British film to pick up the Crystal Globe since Ken Loach won for Kes in 1970.
Furthermore, the film’s success follows on from recent documentary wins at A-festivals. Berlinale’s Golden Bear was won by Mati Diop for Dahomey in 2024, and by Nicolas Philibert in 2023 for On the Adamant. Laura Poitras’ All the Beauty and the Bloodshed won Venice’s Golden Lion in 2022.
The synopsis for A Sudden Glimpse to Deeper Things reads how Wilhelmina Barns-Graham was a painter, a visionary, an artist who saw the world in a unique way. One day in May 1949, Barns-Graham, then 36 years old and an emerging figure in the modernist St. Ives [Cornwall, UK] group of artists, climbed the Grindelwald glacier in Switzerland. She experienced an epiphany which rewired her brain and transformed her art. She spent the rest of her life painting it. Through a cinematic immersion into her art and life, filmmaker Mark Cousins explores themes of gender, neurodiversity, climate change, and the mysteries of creativity from youth to old age.
Director Mark Cousins is a multi-award-winning Northern Irish/Scottish filmmaker, best known for his documentaries about cinema and visual culture, including The Story of Film; The Eyes of Orson Welles; The Story of Looking; The March on Rome and My Name is Alfred HItchcock. Over the past decade, his films have screened at most of the world’s major festivals, including Cannes, Venice, Toronto, Telluride and Sundance. In 2020 he won the European Film Academy’s inaugural Innovation Award for Women Make Film.
The Karlovy Vary award for A Sudden Glimpse to Deeper Things comes hot on the heels of recent Scottish successes at Sheffield where The Boy and the Suit of Lights, directed by Inma de Reyes, picked up the Grand Jury Award for International First Feature Competition. A Special Mention was given in the same category to Scottish director Duncan Cowles for Silent Men.
