The position of president will not be newly filled and will remain dedicated to Jiří Bartoška in memoriam. Management of the festival will be taken over by its current executive director, Kryštof Mucha.
Prague, 13 May 2025 – Rockaway Arts, majority owner of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (KVIFF), will continue the legacy of Jiří Bartoška. As the festival prepares for its 59th edition, it will preserve the values and level of quality that its president built up over the years. The festival will continue to be guided by a strong and stable team headed by executive director Kryštof Mucha. The position of president will not be filled and will remain dedicated to Jiří Bartoška in memoriam.
“Despite the very sad fact that the world of culture has lost one of its most important personalities, we want to assure the public that the Karlovy Vary festival will continue to possess the level of quality that Jiří Bartoška and his team have always given it,” says Jan Jírovec, head of the Rockaway Arts group.
Kryštof Mucha, who joined the festival team in 1997 and has been its executive director since 2004, will become chairman of the board of the KVIFF Group. Remaining on the festival’s management team are artistic director Karel Och and head of production Petr Lintimer. “For many years, I had the wonderful opportunity to work with Jiří Bartoška and to see how he thought and where he was taking the festival. I believe that, together with Karel Och and Petr Lintimer, we will succeed in continuing his legacy,” says Mucha.
The legacy of Jiří Bartoška will thus remain firmly associated with the festival.
Standing behind the festival is Rockaway Arts, a joint undertaking by Jakub Havrlant, founder of Rockaway Capital, and Karel Komárek, founder of the KKCG group. In 2021, Rockaway Arts (then owned by Rockaway Capital) became majority owner of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival at a time when the ongoing pandemic put many cultural events in a difficult situation.
Rockaway Arts was subsequently also joined by Jiří Bartoška’s close friend Karel Komárek, a patron of culture and longtime KVIFF supporter. This step helped to develop Rockaway Arts as a cultural platform that supports important events such as the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (but also events such as Colours of Ostrava or Designblok). “Over the past thirty years, Jiří Bartoška has built up one of the most important film festivals in Europe. He did so thanks to his personal vision and the team of people that he so excellently managed to assemble around him. For these reasons, among others, we have decided that the position of president shall remain associated with his name. I view it as a way of honoring one of the most distinctive figures of Czech culture and of preserving his legacy,” says Komárek.
“The festival remains in the hands of an experienced and well-coordinated team with a clear vision for the future. Our role as owners is to ensure the festival’s stability and to lay the groundwork for further growth,” concludes Rockaway’s founder Jakub Havrlant.
