The 60th edition of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival has expanded its lineup of high-profile guests by announcing that Hollywood legend Dustin Hoffman and French actress Juliette Binoche will receive Crystal Globes for Outstanding Artistic Contribution to World Cinema, the festival’s highest lifetime achievement honor.
The pair join an increasingly star-studded anniversary edition that already includes President’s Award recipients Maggie Gyllenhaal and Jesse Eisenberg, along with newly announced guests Harvey Keitel, Jeffrey Wright, Kevin Bacon, Kyra Sedgwick, Sosie Bacon, Travis Bacon, and acclaimed cinematographer Robert Richardson. Together, the announcements underscore the international profile of this year’s anniversary festival, which runs July 3-11.
Hoffman will receive his Crystal Globe during the festival’s opening ceremony, while Binoche will be honored at the closing ceremony. Both will also present films connected to their careers, continuing Karlovy Vary’s tradition of pairing major awards with special screenings that celebrate influential figures in world cinema.
Dustin Hoffman returns with a defining American classic
Few actors have reshaped modern screen acting as profoundly as Dustin Hoffman. Across a career spanning more than six decades, the two-time Academy Award winner became known for portraying complex, unconventional characters that challenged traditional Hollywood leading-man archetypes, helping define a new generation of American cinema in the late 1960s and 1970s.
His breakthrough came with The Graduate, Mike Nichols‘ landmark 1967 comedy-drama in which Hoffman played recent college graduate Benjamin Braddock. The film became one of the defining works of New Hollywood, earning Hoffman his first Academy Award nomination while establishing him as one of the industry’s most compelling young actors. Karlovy Vary will screen the film in his honor during this year’s festival.
Throughout the following decade, Hoffman built one of American cinema’s most acclaimed filmographies. His performances in Midnight Cowboy, Little Big Man, Straw Dogs, Papillon, Lenny, All the President’s Men, and Marathon Man showcased remarkable versatility, moving between psychologically demanding dramas, political thrillers, and character-driven studies.
His first Academy Award for Best Actor came with Kramer vs. Kramer in 1979, followed by a second Oscar nearly a decade later for his portrayal of the autistic Raymond Babbitt in Rain Man. Other career highlights include Tootsie, Hook, Wag the Dog, Finding Neverland, The Meyerowitz Stories, and his recent appearance in Francis Ford Coppola‘s Megalopolis.
Beyond acting, Hoffman made his feature directing debut with Quartet in 2012. His contributions to film have also been recognized with the Golden Globe’s Cecil B. DeMille Award and the Kennedy Center Honors.
Festival audiences will also encounter a performer still actively working. Hoffman recently appeared opposite Leo Woodall in Tuner, which premiered on the international festival circuit, while his memoir, Look at Me, is scheduled for publication later this year.
For Karlovy Vary, screening The Graduate offers audiences the opportunity to revisit one of the films that transformed both Hoffman’s career and American cinema, while honoring an actor whose influence extends across generations of filmmakers and performers.
Juliette Binoche honored for a career spanning European and world cinema
Juliette Binoche will receive her Crystal Globe at the festival’s closing ceremony, recognizing a career that has balanced major international productions with some of Europe’s most celebrated auteur cinema.
Binoche first gained widespread attention in France through André Téchiné’s Appointment, before becoming closely associated with director Leos Carax in Mauvais Sang and The Lovers on the Bridge, performances that established her as one of French cinema’s leading talents.
Her international breakthrough came with Philip Kaufman’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being, adapted from Milan Kundera’s novel and partly set in Czechoslovakia. The English-language production introduced Binoche to global audiences while giving her career a connection to Czech cultural history that remains especially meaningful for Karlovy Vary.
She cemented her reputation through Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Three Colours: Blue, widely regarded as one of the defining European films of the 1990s. Her performance earned numerous international honors, including the Venice Film Festival’s Volpi Cup and a César Award.
Binoche won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for The English Patient, Anthony Minghella’s sweeping romantic drama that captured nine Oscars. She later earned another Oscar nomination for Chocolat, while continuing to favor collaborations with internationally acclaimed directors including Michael Haneke, Abbas Kiarostami, Claire Denis, Olivier Assayas, Bruno Dumont, and Tran Anh Hung.
Her willingness to alternate between mainstream productions and more experimental filmmaking has defined much of her career. Films such as Certified Copy, Clouds of Sils Maria, Let the Sunshine In, and The Taste of Things have reinforced her standing as one of Europe’s most respected performers, while recent work has included Apple’s The New Look, in which she portrayed Coco Chanel, and The Return, reuniting her with Ralph Fiennes nearly three decades after The English Patient.
Binoche’s influence extends beyond acting. In 2024, she was elected president of the European Film Academy, becoming only the second woman to lead the organization.
To accompany her Crystal Globe presentation, Karlovy Vary will screen Certified Copy, Three Colours: Blue, and the documentary In-I in Motion, which explores the avant-garde performance project she created with British choreographer Akram Khan.
The selections reflect the breadth of Binoche’s career, spanning intimate arthouse productions, internationally acclaimed dramas, and multidisciplinary artistic collaborations.
The announcement of Hoffman and Binoche further strengthens what is shaping up to be one of the most prominent guest lineups in recent Karlovy Vary history. Alongside previously announced appearances by Maggie Gyllenhaal and Jesse Eisenberg, and additional visits from Harvey Keitel, Jeffrey Wright, Kevin Bacon and his family, and cinematographer Robert Richardson, the festival’s 60th anniversary is bringing together Academy Award winners and internationally recognized filmmakers from across generations.
