The 60th edition of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival will open outside its traditional home this year, with a special pre-opening screening in Mariánské Lázně. The festival will begin with Pedro Almodóvar’s new film Bitter Christmas (Amarga Navidad), marking a symbolic return to the historic origins of the event nearly eight decades after its inception.
The special screening will take place on Wednesday, July 1, at the Mariánské Lázně Municipal Theatre, two days before the official opening of the festival in Karlovy Vary. The event references the fact that the first-ever festival screenings in 1946 were held in Mariánské Lázně, with films later shown the following day in Karlovy Vary. In the early years of the festival, Mariánské Lázně even served as the sole host location in 1947 and 1948 before the event gradually consolidated in Karlovy Vary by 1950.
The screening of Bitter Christmas in Mariánské Lázně will include a festival delegation introduction, a welcome drink for attendees, and will be hosted by presenter Marek Eben. Tickets for the event are already on sale through the theatre’s website.
Almodóvar’s latest film explores creativity
Bitter Christmas premiered earlier this year in the Cannes Film Festival main competition and will screen in Karlovy Vary in the Horizons section of the program.
The film continues Almodóvar’s exploration of intimate human relationships and artistic creation, weaving together two interconnected narrative strands. It follows Raúl (Leonardo Sbaraglia), a respected screenwriter and film director, and Elsa (Bárbara Lennie), the protagonist of his latest screenplay, a commercial director dealing with the grief of losing her mother. As Elsa attempts to process her emotional exhaustion and reassess her life through work, Raúl becomes increasingly dependent on the lives of those around him as material for his writing.
Almodóvar uses this dual structure to examine the boundaries between lived experience and artistic interpretation. The film raises questions about whether creative expression can exist without drawing deeply—and sometimes destructively—on real human relationships. It continues themes present in his recent work, including the tension between emotional authenticity and artistic construction.
A symbolic return to festival origins
The decision to open the festival in Mariánské Lázně carries historical significance beyond the film itself. The spa town played a central role in the earliest years of what would become the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, hosting the first screenings in 1946 and serving as the main festival location in the following two years.
By staging this year’s pre-opening event there, organizers are drawing attention to the festival’s evolving identity while acknowledging its origins in the immediate post-war period. The dual-city structure of those early years—where films were shown across both Mariánské Lázně and Karlovy Vary—has not been revisited in decades, making this year’s ceremony a rare historical echo.
The 60th edition of KVIFF is already positioned as a milestone year, with previously announced retrospective programs celebrating the festival’s history, and high-profile guests including Jesse Eisenberg and Maggie Gyllenhaal. The addition of an off-site opening screening adds another layer to the anniversary framing, linking contemporary programming with the festival’s foundational history.
Following the opening screening in Mariánské Lázně, the main program will continue in Karlovy Vary from July 3 to July 11.
