Maggie Gyllenhaal returned to the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival this weekend with a personal story that reached back nearly three decades, revealing that a semester studying in Prague helped inspire her eventual transition from acclaimed actor to filmmaker.
The Oscar-nominated actor, writer and director received the festival’s President’s Award during Friday’s opening ceremony before introducing her new film The Bride! on Saturday. Speaking to audiences and journalists during the festival, Gyllenhaal reflected on her earlier visit to the Czech Republic as a Columbia University student, describing it as a formative period that influenced her artistic identity.
The festival also marked a full-circle moment for Gyllenhaal. In 2006, she won Karlovy Vary’s Best Actress award for Sherrybaby, though she was unable to attend the ceremony. Twenty years later, she returned to accept one of the festival’s highest honors.
Prague semester helped shape her voice as a filmmaker
While accepting the President’s Award, Gyllenhaal surprised the audience by revealing that this was actually her second visit to Karlovy Vary.
“I was here when I was 19,” she said, explaining that she spent a semester studying abroad in Prague while attending Columbia University.
During that time, she visited Karlovy Vary, sampled the city’s famous spa wafers and mineral springs, and admitted—with a laugh—that academics were not always her top priority.
“I’m actually a really good student,” she joked. “But when I was studying in Prague, I didn’t go to really any classes at all.”
More significantly, Gyllenhaal said the experience introduced her to new cinematic influences and helped her recognize her own artistic tastes.
She singled out Miloš Forman‘s Loves of a Blonde as a film that profoundly affected her.
“I loved that movie, and it’s like something cracked in me,” she said. “That voice of going, ‘OK, this is me. This is what I like!’ is part of what pushed me to be a director.”
According to Gyllenhaal, discovering films outside the Hollywood mainstream encouraged her to trust her own instincts and eventually pursue directing.
“I think that being here that semester was one of the first inklings I had of myself as a director,” she said.
Returning as director of The Bride!
Gyllenhaal returned to Karlovy Vary to present The Bride!, the horror reimagining that follows her acclaimed directorial debut The Lost Daughter, which earned Academy Award nominations for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Picture.
Introducing the film, she told audiences she was especially pleased to screen it in Karlovy Vary.
“I’m glad you’re seeing the film here,” she said. “It’s a movie about monsters, and the movie itself is a monster.”
The film stars Christian Bale and Jessie Buckley, with Gyllenhaal also casting her husband Peter Sarsgaard and brother Jake Gyllenhaal in key roles.
Speaking with journalists, Gyllenhaal described directing as more fulfilling than acting, comparing the responsibility of leading a production to raising a child.
“I feel it is very similar to being a mother,” she said. “You become responsible for the life of another person. That is both incredibly exciting, powerful, and absolutely terrifying.”
She also said she discovered unexpected joy in collaborating with her cinematographer during pre-production, building a shared visual language before filming begins.
“So sometimes when people ask me if I want to act,” she said, “I think no—I want to prep with my cinematographer.”
Gyllenhaal also reflected on the industry’s changing attitudes toward female directors, noting that directing remains “predominantly a male job,” but saying she was struck by the level of respect afforded to the role once she stepped behind the camera.
Now preparing an adaptation of Rachel Kushner’s novel Creation Lake as her next directing project, Gyllenhaal said the work remains in its earliest stages. For now, however, her return to Karlovy Vary represented both a celebration of her career and a homecoming to a city that helped shape it decades earlier.
Lead photo courtesy Facebook / Karlovy Vary International Film Festival
