The cultural village was hit by sad news. Mátyás Dráfi, a longtime member of the Komárno Jókai Theater, died at the age of 83. Slovaks knew him thanks to his role in Juraj Jakubiska’s legendary film The Thousand Bee and also in marquee series City of Shadows and Neighborhood Cases.
Jozef Černek, director of Dom Matica slovakska Komárno, informed about the death of the actor on the social network. “A great actor and gentleman of the stage has left us. Mátyás Dráfi passed away on October 20, 2025 at the age of 83 after a long illness. Winner of the Kossuth Prize, a long-time supporter of Hungarian theater in Slovakia, a person with an unforgettable voice and character,” he said in the status.
He reminded that he will remain in the memory of our country thanks to the film The Thousand-Year Bee. “The film track is important, but for many of us he was primarily a person of the theater: the stage was his home, his partners his family and the audience his friends. I have the honor to remember him personally. He visited us several times with his theater – always with nobility, humility and joy, which was transmitted from the boards to the auditorium. We even considered tripartite cooperation together with the late József Kiss Péntek. Unfortunately, it didn’t come true,” he revealed.
“Mátyás Dráfi was one of those artists for whom art and humanity could not be separated. Each of his performances was a thank you to life; each applause was a small prayer for the courage to be a better person. May the land he loved so much rest in peace,” added Černek at the end.
Mátyás Dráfi was born on November 17, 1942 in Galant. He became a member of the Hungarian Regional Theater in 1959, studied acting in Bratislava. In the Hungarian regional theater, in Jókai’s theater, he portrayed a whole range of acting characters, directed, performed in separate programs, guested in several Hungarian theaters.
