Published: September 17, 2019| 08:26 AM

The artistic director of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, translator and film critic Eva Zaoralová, was recently awarded the Cavaliere Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana for helping to spread and promote Italian culture and the Italian language abroad.

She received the award from Italy’s president Sergio Matarella on the basis of a nomination submitted by the Italian Cultural Institute in Prague to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation.

Eva Zaoralová has translated numerous Italian authors into Czech, including Giuseppe Dessi, Federico Fellini, Goffredo Parise, Michelangelo Antonioni, Alba de Cespedes, Sveva Casati Modignani, Cesare Pavese, Carlo Fruttero and Alverto Bevilacqua. She has also written and published several books and articles on them.

Since 1994, she has worked with actor Jiří Bartoška as the head of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, of which she was the artistic director until 2010. She has taught film history at FAMU and continues to contribute to numerous leading international film magazines. She has also been on many festival juries, including Venice, Berlin, Cannes, Mannheim, Wiesbaden, and Antalya.