Actor and filmmaker Jesse Eisenberg appeared at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival to collect its President's Award, reflecting on his career and previewing his new film, The Debut. Starring Julianne Moore and Paul Giamatti and set in the world of 1990s New Jersey summer-stock theatre, the film matters as the follow-up to his acclaimed 2024 Holocaust road-trip drama A Real Pain, which earned him awards recognition as a writer-director.

Eisenberg explained that The Debut draws on his own early, anxious experiences of theatre, and clarified that although it centres on a woman rehearsing for a musical, it is not itself a conventional musical. He wrote the lead role specifically for Moore, admitting this was a professional gamble as the film would only have been made with her involvement. He also spoke candidly about feeling embarrassed by the intense publicity around A Real Pain, saying he felt unqualified to discuss Polish history, the Jewish experience or American politics, and that being celebrated for a film rooted in his family's persecution by the Nazis felt uncomfortable rather than therapeutic.