František Klišík, the Czech poet and charismatic protagonist of Miro Remo’s “Better Go Mad in the Wild,” died in the Czech Republic on Sunday, the day after the documentary about him and his twin brother Ondřej won the top prize at this year’s Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. He was 62 years old and is survived by Ondřej.
According to Czech media reports, Klišík had been visiting a friend in the Czech village of Ohrobec and celebrating the film’s victory. He was found dead in a pond adjacent to the village pub at 8:30 a.m. local time on Sunday.
Only a couple of days before, both Klišík attended the festival for the premiere of their film.
Remo’s winning documentary, a beautiful portrait of the two brothers facing down life and mortality while living in the remote Šumava forests, was the first Czech film in eight years to win the top prize in Karlovy Vary. It will now serve as a tribute to František and a time capsule of his life after his unexpected death. Though he was a man the world had only just gotten to know via the film, he made a larger-than-life impression while also being deeply human.
In a statement posted to Facebook following František’s death, Remo said that the news “hit me in the car” while “my phone was still buzzing with joy.”
“We were returning home in a celebratory mood, and our whole family was enjoying the sweet feeling of victory,” Remo wrote in a post addressed directly to Klišík. “Our two children were in the back, and my wife Veronika and I held hands, crying with happiness – the past few years had been very difficult. The sky was blue, cloudless, the landscape sleepless… a gentle breeze played in the grass.”
When news of the death came, he added, “I double-checked if it were really true; it was. Looking at my wife, I simply spread my arms, just like when we won, Franto, but differently now. Since then, many of your poems echo in my head: ‘Life is a momentary illusion, a cry into silence, a foolish effort, a cup forced upon you, a sip of delicious taste, a prerequisite for death, which then is our certainty, a prerequisite for life.’”
In a release announcing the film’s award, the Karlovy Vary jury called “Better Go Mad in the Wild a “a funny valentine to the fading art of being true to yourself” and that the “delightfully inventive documentary is a portrait of bickering twin brothers who may live a weird, off-grid life on their dilapidated farm but who, in a world as mad as ours, actually might be the sanest people on earth.”
“In the lifestyle it portrays but also in the filmmaking risks it takes and the raucously loving brotherhood it admires, “Better Go Mad in the Wild” feels like a gulp of fresh, woody air, or a quick dip in an outdoor pond, or a moment of contemplation as a cow chews on your beard,” the jury said. “In short, it feels like being free.”