The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (KVIFF) celebrates the 80th anniversary of its founding and its 60th edition this year. In addition to Hollywood celebrities, it has long celebrated and honored big Czech stars.
This year, KVIFF will bestow its President’s Award on a famous Slovak actress who became an ambassador and respected voice in political life.
“By presenting an award to Magda Vášáryová, the festival aims not just to express its respect for the performances of one of the greatest Slovak actresses of all time, but also to remember the unique artistic connection between the Czech and Slovak filmmakers who shaped our two countries’ shared cinematic history,” organizers said. Slovakia and Czechia became separate independent countries again at the start of 1993, following the peaceful dissolution of Czechoslovakia.
Vášáryová “has always been outstanding, including in terms of her intelligence in selecting her parts and her ability to use her depth, both intellectual and emotional, in her characters,” KVIFF artistic director Karel Och tells THR. “With her, it is a bit like with Eric Cantona, who decided, when he was 30, that it was enough and so he stopped playing soccer to do other things [, including acting]. Every now and then, you have this fantastic Renaissance personality, such as Mrs. Vášáryová, who became a very respected politician.”
Lauding her intelligence, ability to express complex connections, “beautiful sense of humor and the Central European sense for irony, it is a great pleasure to [honor] her,” Och concludes. “I can’t wait for her to join the festival and accept the award. In this double anniversary year, when we look a lot into the past and at the heritage of the festival, we were striving to honor a special person, who is connecting the world of cinema with other worlds beyond culture.”
The 77-year-old Vášáryová may be well known in Czechia and Slovakia, but in case you need a primer, THR has compiled a few things to know about her right here.
Breakthrough Film
Vášáryov had her breakthrough role in František Vláčil’s historical drama Marketa Lazarová in 1967. “In 1998, domestic film critics and journalists voted this cinematic masterpiece as the most important work of our hundred-year cinematic history,” KVIFF highlighted in unveiling its plans to honor her. “The film was digitally restored in 2011, and the restored version’s world premiere was held at the 46th KVIFF.”
The actress, not even 20 back then, plays the titular character in the movie.
What is the Czechoslovak New Wave period epic, an adaptation of a 1931 novel by Vladislav Vančura, about? Set in the 13th century amid a shift from Paganism to Christianity in Central Europe, the film tells the story of the virgin daughter of a feudal lord who gets kidnapped by marauders before she is set to join a convent.
She Didn’t Always Have Her Eye on the Arts
Vášáryová became a famous actress, but she originally didn’t focus on the arts. Instead, she attended a school with a focus on math and physics. But the international success of Marketa Lazarová brought further acting offers. As KVIFF highlighted: “Vášáryová has said that she had originally not dreamt of becoming an actress.”
Luckily for fans, things ended up playing out differently, and she acted in more films and started to perform at the Divadlo Na korze theater in Bratislava, which was famous for its absurdist drama, political satire, and avant-garde productions.
‘Birds, Orphans and Fools,’ courtesy of KVIFF
She Has Starred in a Jules Verne Film
Actually, to be more precise, she portrayed the female lead in Karel Zeman’s 1970 adaptation of Jules Verne’s novel Off on a Comet, entitled On the Comet.
She plays Angelika, who saves Captain Hector Servadac, a cartographer for the French army in a French colony in Northern Africa, when he falls into the sea while mapping the area. The young woman is on the run from Spanish captors.
A Star-Turned-Ambassador
After the Velvet Revolution led to the fall of communism, Vášáryová accepted an offer from President Václav Havel to be Czechoslovakia’s ambassador to Austria (1990–1993). Later, 2000 to 2005, she served as Slovakia’s ambassador to Poland. “She has since continued to be engaged in politics and public life,” highlighted KVIFF.
And it mentioned: “In February 2026, she earned a Ph.D. in historical sociology from Charles University’s Faculty of Humanities [in Prague]. She has authored several books, including last year’s collection of interviews Než zmizím (Before I Disappear), in which she speaks openly about current issues.”
Out of the Past, and Into the Future
During this year’s 60th edition of KVIFF, audiences can watch Vášáryová star in a film featured in the Out of the Past classics program, namely Juraj Jakubisko’s 1969 movie Birds, Orphans and Fools, “which will be personally introduced by the legendary actress Magda Vášáryová,” as the fest highlights. “This cult ‘banned’ parable only had its true premiere more than 20 years after it was filmed, at the 1990 KVIFF.”
Why banned, you ask? Here’s a synopsis: “Three people who are all orphaned by political violence, live In an unspecified time and place and face a tough, violent world. To survive, they adopt a childlike approach to life, living in joyful denial.”
