Part of the delegation for the new Czech film FC Roma, which had its world premier in the Documentary Film Competition, came to Karlovy Vary from Děčín. It is there that there is a football club made up of primarily Romany players that some teams from the lowest Czech league refused to play against. "The film shows how, when you want to take a critical stance against a certain social phenomenon, sometimes the best approach is humour," says Martin Horyna from the KVIFF programming department, describing the first original collaboration between directors Rozálie Kohoutová and Tomáš Bojar.
"When those two first showed up at the field, I told Patrik to chase them off. But they wouldn't give up and came to every practice, until finally I got used to them and agreed to everything," says Pavel Horváth, the coach of the featured team, recalling the early days of shooting. At the discussion after the film he also shared his critical view of the performance of the Czech national team at this year's Euro. Hopefully his team will do better when they play against "FC KVIFF" at the Karlovy Vary Stadium on Friday at 4:30 pm.
His colleague and friend Patrik Herák ensured the audience that they saw the real him in the movie. "The first two weeks we had to get used to each other, but I wasn't acting. I don't pretend for anyone. The way I am, that's the way I am on the screen. I say what's on my mind," said Herák, who is glad that the film presents Roma who love sports and don't live "in the mud".
"The film mixes raw observation with staged sequences. But from the very start we tried to stick to what we saw in Děčín and what belongs to Pavel and Patrik and their reality," explained Bojar, co-author of another football documentary, Two Nil.
