This year’s edition of the festival is full of anniversaries. For instance, we are commemorating 130 years since the first-ever film screening in the Czech lands, which took place at Karlovy Vary’s Kurhaus in mid-July 1896. And eighty years ago, in August 1946, the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival got its start with screenings in Mariánské Lázně and Karlovy Vary. The only older festival that is still held today and retains a FIAPF category A rating is the festival in Venice, which was founded in 1932. The Cannes and Locarno festivals held their inaugural editions shortly after Karlovy Vary – in September 1946.
Thanks to the vagaries of history, this year is not the festival’s eighty-first edition, but only the sixtieth. There were no festivals in 1953 and 1955, and because of international politics, after 1959 the Karlovy Vary festival alternated years with the festival in Moscow, thus reducing the number of potential editions by another eighteen. In 1994, the festival’s organization was taken over by Jiří Bartoška and Eva Zaoralová, and since then it has been held every year. Under Bartoška and Zaoralová, it also evolved into the concentrated ten-day event it is today – one during which the entire city center literally lives and breathes film, a place where stars, filmmakers, journalists, and audiences can meet just about everywhere, including randomly on the street. The only time an edition was skipped was because of the Covid pandemic in 2020.
Unfortunately, both founders of the modern festival have left us forever – Eva Zaoralová four years ago and Jiří Bartoška just last year. We remember them with love and admiration. Their successors Karel Och and Kryštof Mucha worked with them for many years and continue to give the festival an enormous amount of new energy.
Come see for yourself this year!
