Maggie Gyllenhaal (The Bride!, The Lost Daughter, Secretary, The Honourable Woman) shared the pleasure she gets out of directing and her transition from acting during a chat with a group of journalists at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival on Saturday.
Discussing the work of a director, she suggested: “I feel it is very similar to being a mother. You become a mother – all of a sudden you are actually responsible for the life of another person. That is both incredibly exciting, powerful, and absolutely terrifying.”
She concluded: “In terms of responsibility, it is really major. That’s a really interesting thing about directing, way more so than producing, and also way more so than acting.”
Gyllenhaal also shared the joy she experiences as a director in the prep process with her cinematographer “thinking through the movie in a joined imaginary world,” explaining: “It’s so cool, it’s so intense, and there is the pleasure for me in being on set with a plan with a shared language that we’ve built together.”
She concluded: “That was new to me, and I didn’t know how much I would love it. So sometimes when people ask me if I want to act, I think no, I want to prep with my cinematographer, and I want to keep learning this language that I have gotten so much pleasure out of learning.”
Gyllenhaal also addressed women directors. “Directing is, historically and still, predominantly a male job,” she shared. “I found that when I went to do it, I was treated with a kind of respect that I had never encountered before, just because that’s how one treats the director.”
She traveled to the fest in the Czech spa town, accompanied by her husband Peter Sarsgaard, to receive the festival’s President’s Award at Friday night’s opening ceremony of KVIFF‘s double anniversary edition, its 60th fest in its 80th year.
America’s 250th birthday also came up. “It is the Fourth of July today, so we’re celebrating it here,” Gyllenhaal initially said, before continuing: “I’m abstaining from celebration this year. I’m not celebrating the Fourth of July.”
The filmmaker was also asked about how her daughter Ramona was last year among people arrested at a Columbia University protest against Israel’s war in Gaza. “My daughter is her own woman,” Gyllenhaal replied. “I’m sure you’re not surprised to hear that.”
Gyllenhaal, who is also introducing a late Saturday screening of her genre-bending The Bride!, which disappointed at the box office, recently reteamed with Warner Bros., with the studio optioning the Rachel Kushner novel Creation Lake for her to write and develop as a directing vehicle. Gyllenhaal is also set to produce the project.
Asked about the project on Saturday, she said: “It’s in the very, very beginning of the process. I feel like it’s in the part of the creative [process] that is so personal and private and secret. I’m very excited about it. I love the author, Rachel Kushner. I love the book. I have my own unusual take on it, but it’s just beginning to simmer.”
20 years ago, Gyllenhaal won a competitive award at KVIFF as best actress for her role in Laurie Collyer’s drama Sherrybaby, in which she played a young woman who gets released from prison and is recovering from a heroin addiction. Sherrybaby also won Karlovy Vary’s Crystal Globe award back in 2006. Back then, the actress couldn’t come to town, though.
In accepting her 2026 honor, she recalled a study abroad semester to the Czech Republic, including a visit to Karlovy Vary, that, she shared, was “part of what pushed me to be a director to express my view of the world, however strange and challenging, and however different.”
