For the fourth year in a row, the organisers of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival have succeeded in finding two Czech films for the Documentary Films Competition. FC Roma is on the programme for Tuesday, and on Saturday the first audiences saw Normal Autistic Film by Miroslav Janek. "I am pleasantly agitated; as we all know, only with an audience will it become apparent whether the film is any good or a half-dead," the director confided before the screening.
It was clear from the debate after the screening that his film, which observes five adolescent autistics, is no half-dead. "We filmed using six people with Asperger's. One of them ended up not being in the film, but will have their own short film instead," revealed Janek, led onto the subject by his producer, Jan Macola. "I told him that there must be lots of this kind of film already, but he claimed that there weren't in the Czech Republic. Then, when I met the actual people, I started to get interested," the director described.
One of the protagonists, Lukáš Horn, also took part in the debate with the audience. He stated that the film definitely did not show how autistics see the world in general. "But even I don't know how I would make a film about autistics," he said, and for that Janek shook his hand and added: "I started shooting without knowing the answer. And I didn't find it. But I did try." To this, Lukáš commented: "I hoped this film would say that it is an endless search. Autism is taken globally, but the film showed how different every autistic person is. That is to say, we have something in common – but then, so do you. That's why, when people see Normal Autistic Film, they think they are autistic too."
