Karlovy Vary International Film Festival 

Renowned Czech director MILOŠ FOMAN is back in his homeland this week for KVIFF’s world premiere screening of A Walk Worthwhile, which is a film version of the 1960s theatrical work by the popular Czech writing team of Jiří Suchý and Jiří Šlitr. This project was something of a homecoming for Forman, who has arguably become one of America’s leading filmmakers since emigrating from Czechoslovakia in 1968, making such acclaimed movies as One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Amadeus and The People vs. Larry Flynt.

Revisiting the past had Forman in a reflective mood when he spoke to the Festival Daily before coming to KVIFF, as he recalled his youth and the memory of his parents who perished in concentration camps in WWII.

Did you get nostalgic while filming A Walk Worthwhile?
Well, of course. All of a sudden I returned forty years back; all of a sudden I was young again. When I hear Jiří Suchý’s incomparably beautiful language, memories start coming back – and I’m there, I’m back in the moment!

The film’s footage of Prague was obviously shot by someone who loves the city. I couldn’t help feeling, however, that some of the shots were a little bit kitschy…
They are. But I wanted it to be clear in the film that we are going to the National Theater. You know, before I went to study in Prague, I had been to the capital just once, when we got permission to visit my mother – in 1942 at the Petschek Palace [Gestapo headquarters].

Do you remember the visit?
It was interesting in that we were given permission in the first place. In spite of all the terror, the Germans were very organized and kept everything in order, and apparently, my mother’s documents said, “one visit allowed.” So they brought her back from Auschwitz for just a ten-minute talk about whether we would be preserving apricots, whether we had a large crop, how Mrs. Procházková was doing, etc. – we only talked about trivial things.

Why?
They hadn’t told her that her children and brother would be coming to see her. She thought she was being brought back for interrogation. An SS man, who spoke Czech, was standing next to us to hear everything. We had waited there for about two hours, my brother Pavel, my uncle Boleslav and myself. They took us to this vault. I remember seeing dried blood on the walls. The vault had been a bank safe before, so it had a thick steel door. We were sitting there and when mother entered she was just so surprised. So what to talk about? I sat on my mother’s lap, she hugged me... and then the SS man said: “Right, that’s it.” My mother left. We never saw her again.

You will find the complete interview by Veronika Bednarova in today´s edition of the Festival Daily.