Better Go Mad in the Wild

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Karlovy Vary’s Crystal Globe winner is an enchanting portrait of solitude and free-spirited abandon following eccentric twin brothers living in the Czech wilderness.

In a farmstead deep in the Šumavan Mountains, situated near Czechia’s western borders with Austria and Germany, live identical twins František and Ondřej Klišík. Now in their sixties, the brothers exist in bucolic bliss: drinking, bickering, swimming in glacial lakes and wandering – sometimes in the nude – through nearby forests. On other occasions, they commune with the animals in their midst: their chickens and cows; their dog Joint; and their majestic bull Nandy, whose voiceover recounts the brothers’ storied pasts and current concerns.

Informed by the eponymous book by journalist Aleš Palán and showered with three Czech Lion Awards as well as the top prize at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, Better Go Mad in the Wild is a dreamy and poetic glimpse into a life of wilful seclusion. Produced over a five-year period, during which director Miro Remo and his crew spent 60 days with the twins, it leverages its hybrid form – not quite essay film or observational documentary – to transport viewers to a world both elemental and unmoored from modern society. It’s a stunning work propelled by emotion and tone, joining František and Ondřej as they muse on mortality, their misadventures and the dreams keeping their maverick ways alive.

“Sprightly, warm, and endearing portraiture … conjuring little moments of magic by slowing down for long enough to notice all the details of two born outsiders who turned nature into their own private sanctuary.” – RogerEbert.com