Jirí Bartoska, a major star of pre-Velvet Revolution Czech theater, TV and film who helped save the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival before serving as its president and public face for decades, died Thursday. He was 78.
Bartoska died in Prague following a long battle with lung cancer, KVIFF executive director Krystof Mucha told The Hollywood Reporter.
Bartoska was born on March 24, 1947 — just months after the inaugural Karlovy Vary International Film Festival — in Decín, Czechoslovakia. Upon graduating from high school, he enrolled at the Janacek Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Brno to pursue a career in theater, and he was a student there when the Soviet occupation of the country began in 1968.
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While at Janacek, Bartoska began visiting Karlovy Vary, a Bohemian spa town — also known by its German name of Carlsbad — some 70 miles outside of Prague. One such visit led to him being cast by director Frantisek Vlácil in the project that launched his film career: Shadows of a Hot Summer, which went on to be awarded the top prize, the Crystal Globe, at KVIFF in 1978.
In the 1980s, through appearances on TV shows including Sanitka, Cirkus Humberto and My Vsichni Skolou Povinní, Bartoska became a household name in Czechoslovakia. At the time, the country had one TV network and one magazine, so being featured on either — and he was on both — resulted in major celebrity.
He also became close to actor Václav Havel, who would go on to become the last president of Czechoslovakia (1989-92) and, after the 1993 split of the country into two nations, the first president of the Czech Republic (1993-2003). The Bartoska/Havel relationship would prove pivotal when KVIFF fell upon hard times.
KVIFF had launched in 1946 — the same year as the Cannes and Locarno festivals — in the immediate aftermath of World War II, two years before the Soviet-backed communist takeover of Czechoslovakia. (The only European film festival that predates 1946 is Venice’s, established in 1932.) Initially called the Czechoslovak Film Festival, the first edition was held in Mariánské Lázne; then in Mariánské Lázne and Karlovy Vary; and then solely in Karlovy Vary.
By 1956, it had found its footing and was declared an “A-category” festival — the same designation that was bestowed upon Cannes — by the International Federation of Producers Associations. Even so, starting in 1959, that organization forced it to alternate each year with the Moscow International Film Festival. The fest consistently attracted major figures from world cinema — among them Frank Capra, Henry Fonda, Tony Curtis, Claudia Cardinale and Bernardo Bertolucci — but was only open to Karlovy Vary residents and industry insiders and struggled to break even financially.
In 1993, the government of the new Czech Republic withdrew financial support for many cultural events, arguing they should become financially independent, and it looked as if KVIFF might go away. In response to massive backlash, the Ministry of Culture convened a group of influential citizens to figure out a way forward. Bartoska later recalled, “I was approached by Igor Sevcik from the Ministry of Culture, along with a couple of other people who had hoped to re-establish the credit and status of KVIFF.”
Bartoska and veteran film journalist Eva Zaoralová were among those who worked with the Ministry of Culture, the city of Karlovy Vary and the historic Grand Hotel Pupp (later the inspiration for Wes Anderson’s Grand Budapest Hotel) to establish the Karlovy Vary Film Festival Foundation. Their efforts helped the fest move forward in 1994 with 70 percent of its funding from private donors (a young Leonardo DiCaprio was a guest that year) and with the intention of turning it into an annual event.
In 1995, Bartoska became the festival’s president and Zaoralová its program director (a position she held until her death in 2022). But that year, the fest faced a new existential threat: the International Federation of Producers Associations, having learned about KVIFF’s financial turmoil, revoked its A-category status and transferred it to Golden Golem, a fest being launched that year in Prague, two weeks before KVIFF, with Meryl Streep attending.
It was clear the Czech Republic could not sustain two major film festivals, and citizens watched with bated breath to see which would survive. It was in this moment that the friendship of Bartoska and Havel proved crucial. Havel declined to visit the fest in Prague but showed up on opening night to KVIFF. “That was the moment that changed the whole game,” Mucha recalls. Two years later, the Golden Golem was gone, and KVIFF embarked on a new golden age.
Over the decades, the festival has become known as the “Woodstock of the East,” with Czech citizens flocking there, often camping in tents alongside the River Teplá and lining up for hours to see provocative films from abroad like Trainspotting, to see homegrown works or to catch a glimpse of honorees.
Bartoska became the face of the fest (Zaoralová preferred to remain behind the scenes), particularly to such A-list visitors as Robert Redford (2005), Robert De Niro (2008), John Travolta (2013), Mel Gibson (2014), Julianne Moore (2019), Michael Caine (2021), Russell Crowe (2023) and Clive Owen (2024), greeting them upon their arrival at the Pupp, toasting them at formal dinners and presenting them with their honors at the fest’s black-tie opening- and closing-night ceremonies. In recent years, he received the same sort of standing ovations that they did.
In 1998, 20 years after Shadows of a Hot Summer won KVIFF’s Crystal Globe and made Bartoska a star, he presented director Vlácil with a special prize from the fest for outstanding contribution to world cinema. “For me,” Bartoska later said, “the circle was complete.” (Vlácil died less than a year later.)
Bartoska continued to act, in 2000 winning the best supporting actor prize at the Czech Lion Awards, the nation’s version of the Oscars, for his performance in All My Loved Ones. But in November 2014, at 67, he was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma. He told the publication Vunela: “I had been filming the series Ja, Mattoni for about 10 days. All of a sudden, I did not feel well, so I went to see a doctor for a check-up. I had an X-ray examination and cancer was detected.” Since then, the cancer was treated but returned.
Bartoska continued to attend KVIFF, though he stepped back from day-to-day work. In 2017, at the Czech Lion Awards, he was presented with an honorary prize for unique contribution to Czech film. Czech president Petr Pavel presented him with the Medal for Merit 1st degree in 2023. And in March, he made one of his final public appearances at the Czech Lion Awards.
Bartoska is survived by his wife, Andrea, whom he married in 1976, and their children, Katerina and Janek.
The 59th edition of KVIFF will take place July 4-12.
Mucha, who first met Bartoska in 1997 and began working at the fest in 2004, tells THR, on behalf of himself and festival artistic director Karel Och: “Karel and I were in our twenties, and he gave us a chance to work with him. We will miss him terribly. He was an incredibly special person who treated everyone the same way — he spoke the same way to the president of the country and a driver at the festival — and he was a great friend. As a festival president, he cannot be replaced. We will try to continue the festival in the way that he would have wanted.”
