{"id":60428,"date":"2025-07-12T20:16:11","date_gmt":"2025-07-12T20:16:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/60428\/"},"modified":"2025-07-12T20:16:11","modified_gmt":"2025-07-12T20:16:11","slug":"miro-remo-shows-hermit-twins-in-doc-better-go-mad-in-the-wild","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/60428\/","title":{"rendered":"Miro Remo Shows Hermit Twins in Doc ‘Better Go Mad in the Wild’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tA hybrid, a drama, a fairy tale and a documentary<\/a> \u2013 even Slovak director Miro Remo<\/a> doesn\u2019t know how to define Karlovy Vary Film Festival<\/a> winner \u201cBetter Go Mad in the Wild<\/a>.\u201d And he doesn\u2019t care.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s not important to me where this film fits formally. What matters is that it faithfully reflects the life of the twins,\u201d he says.\u00a0Remo picked up the coveted Grand Prix on Saturday. <\/p>\n

\n\tHis protagonists, twin brothers Franti\u0161ek and Ond\u0159ej Kli\u0161\u00edk, are living together far away from the rest of society. They are descendants of Slovaks from Romania, who settled in the \u0160umava region after World War II, in areas vacated by Germans.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cLife wasn\u2019t easy for them, but their parents taught them to value every person. Truth was always held in the highest place in their family,\u201d says Remo, who \u201cmet\u201d them while on vacation.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMy father recommended a great book by Ale\u0161 Pal\u00e1n, also called \u2018Better to Go Mad in the Wilderness,\u2019 which includes several powerful stories about the \u0160umava hermits. One of them was about Franta and Ondra. I contacted Ale\u0161 right away, and he brought me into their world.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s a world full of fighting, arm-wrestling and poems that are \u201clived, not penned.\u201d \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of boring c\u2013ts in the world,\u201d state the brothers. But thankfully, they are not among them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI fell in love with them and with their environment. I was fascinated by everything magical and enchantingly unusual,\u201d Remo says.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cCompared with the film, the book offers more factual content. We needed to explain some things \u2013 for example, how Franta lost his hand \u2013 but we decided to only include minimal information.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tEnter a talking cow, narrating the whole story.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe spent 60 days with the brothers over the course of five years, and I began to feel their animals were communicating with us as well. The biggest advantage was that anything was possible on that project. We only needed to overcome our fear of conventions.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tRemo conceived the entire thing as a \u201cfairytale for adults.\u201d Still, some parts of the twins\u2019 lives felt tragic to him.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere are many stories about people struggling with alcohol, but their uniqueness lies elsewhere. They\u2019ve evolved into an unusual form of existence with an extremely strong magical presence,\u201d he says, which led him to move away from the confines of \u201cclassic and overused\u201d social drama.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201c[This social component] is still a part of the story \u2013 for example in the form of alcohol abuse \u2013 but even that issue has two sides to it. In our fairytale, substances take a lot from you, but they also give back. This is the story of their life; one they chose freely. I fully respected it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAs Remo became an observer of this \u201cendless brotherly conflict\u201d and their search for answers to the most burning questions, a friendship was forged.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe openly shared all our fears and desires. I told them it was important to me for their portrayals to be real, truthful and fearless, but also visually rich and deeply magical. They had no special requests \u2013 just one. They wanted to be able to leave the project at any moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd yet they ended up staying, pondering the eternal dilemma. What\u2019s more important: art or everyday life?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cFranta and Ondra are real artists. None of us can compare. Franta says a poem is lived and not written. To which I would add: \u2018Art is a cure for all the viruses of this world,\u2019\u201d says the director, who also appreciated the twins\u2019 playfulness.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI guess I\u2019m just a big kid myself,\u201d he adds.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI also grew up in a family full of love and understanding, and I love to play and step outside of the norms. I understand why they chose this kind of life. The reality we all live in right now is no longer interesting: it\u2019s too ordinary and demanding. It\u2019s better to go mad somewhere in the wilderness.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tProduced by Remo and Tom\u00e1\u0161 Hrub\u00fd for Arsy-Versy, the film was co-produced by nutprodukce. Filmotor <\/a>handles sales, while Aerofilms distributes in Czech Republic and Film Expanded in Slovakia.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\u2018Better Go Mad in the Wild\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A hybrid, a drama, a fairy tale and a documentary \u2013 even Slovak director Miro Remo doesn\u2019t know…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":60429,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[43736,3192,171,32653,40772,43737,53,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-60428","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-better-go-mad-in-the-wild","9":"tag-documentary","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-karlovy-vary-film-festival","12":"tag-kviff-2025","13":"tag-miro-remo","14":"tag-movies","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114842106911804658","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60428"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60428\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}