In just two directing efforts, Karlovy Vary Film Festival honoree Maggie Gyllenhaal managed to subvert more than 100 years of cinematic female stereotypes: “The Lost Daughter” acknowledged the darker aspects of motherhood and what is expected of women, while “The Bride” gave Frankenstein’s Bride agency and autonomy.

Gyllenhaal received the President’s Award on Friday at the festival’s opening ceremony and spoke to international press on Saturday in a suite at the neo-baroque Grand Hotel Pupp in Karlovy Vary.

“For most of the time that people have been making movies, they’ve been made by men,” she said, noting that while “there have been some fascinating female characters” created by male filmmakers, “I think if you’re having a very fundamentally different experience as a male filmmaker… I don’t see how you can understand an entire female experience, especially the parts of ourselves that we’re ashamed of, that we hide, and that we don’t like to share.”

She said that when she read Elena Ferrante’s novel “The Lost Daughter,” “as a mother, I thought, oh, wow, I can’t. Are you that screwed? Wait, I actually relate to what you’re saying. And then a kind of comfort washes over you, like, wow, someone else has said out loud something that I’ve never heard said out loud before.”

When asked if he was trying to break down barriers, he said: “No, I’m just trying to make space for my own experience to be expressed, to make room for [‘The Bride’s’] “Let Jessie Buckley’s experience be expressed, to leave room for my production designer’s experience to be expressed.”

Gyllenhaal added thoughtfully: “It’s not that I’m interested in [breaking] taboos, I think it just happens that way because there have been so few [women] making movies, so it seems that these things are prohibited. It’s just that they haven’t been explored. And I didn’t expect people to get so angry exploring them.”

What interests him are multifaceted women. “I’m not really that interested in ‘strong female characters’. I’m interested in a depiction of women that I can recognize as something that has to do with my own experience, which usually includes some strength, some terrible weakness, some beautiful weakness and vulnerability, some pleasure, some terror – the whole spectrum.”

He said this with a kind of bemused laugh, then recounted that he was talking to a woman he “really respects, who is in her 70s” and that she asked Gyllenhaal a very pertinent question: “How come you weren’t surprised?” That elicited genuine laughter.

He has returned to work with Warner Bros. despite the lack of box office for “The Bride,” an adaptation of the critically acclaimed best-seller “Creation Lake” by Rachel Kushner, although Gyllenhaal did not want to give more details.

“I was completely surprised” that the story about the book option “ended up in the press,” he said. “I’m at the beginning of playing with that project, and I’m at the place where it’s really private, and it’s really about me brainstorming about this incredibly interesting material.” He praised Kushner’s art, but it still “resonates in my own mind and in my own heart.”

Like Gyllenhaal, Warner Bros. leaders Pam Abdy and Mike De Luca have been making big moves lately. “I really love Pam and Mike. They have been wonderful partners throughout this whole process. They are movie lovers and filmmaker lovers.”

Gyllenhaal’s films star some of the best actresses of this generation, and it’s important to her to be as generous as possible with them, their instincts and ideas. “Part of the reason I became a writer and director is because I discovered that a lot of directors weren’t interested in my art, if my expression looked different than what they imagined when they were at home in their room,” she said. “I got really good at figuring out ways to protect the little space around me. But then I got tired of liking doing that dance and thought I needed more space. Not only do I want the freedom to express myself, I want to offer that freedom to other artists.”

She sees movies as a kind of language to learn: “You can participate whenever you want, but it’ll probably be in a different language than what you’re used to. Isn’t it an interesting invitation? Is it an interesting hand to extend? That’s what I like.”

In the end, his films reflect “a really honest expression of what’s on my mind, and first I have to figure out what’s on my mind.”