In the middle of the Czech spa town of Karlovy Vary stands a massive Brutalist building, the Hotel Thermal, which has housed the Karlovy Vary Int’l Film Festival since the late ’70s.It is here in the Thermal, on one of Europe’s biggest screens, where I have seen movies that rival those debuting at Cannes six weeks earlier — discoveries such as German director Jan-Ole Gerster’s demanding-mother drama “Lara,” winner of two prizes, and Hong Khaou’s “Monsoon,” a subtle, soulful rumination on the many facets of identity, starring “Crazy Rich Asians” heartthrob Henry Golding as a Vietnamese refugee raised abroad, struggling to reconnect with his mother country.Karlovy Vary is the first major stop after Cannes where the great French festival’s most essential films (such as Palme d’Or winner “Parasite”) can be seen by non-industry audiences, many of them curious young cinephiles — open-minded twentysomethings from
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