Published: July 06, 2018| 12:00 PM

On Saturday, at the closing ceremony, actor Jaromír Hanzlík will receive the Festival President’s Award for his extraordinary contribution to Czech film. The crowded Karlovy Vary theatre, where he acted years ago, honoured him as early as Thursday. The actor was moved by the long, standing ovation. He then joined the audience to watch the movie Searching, which he hadn’t seen in forty years.

“I watched it like it was a new movie and memories flooded back to me. I was about seventeen, back then, and I remember the director and writer Tonda Máša telling me: Don’t act. Look with your eyes but don’t act!” reminisced Hanzlík, who created his second role for the movie Searching.

He treated his KVIFF Talk after the screening, moderated by editor-in-chief of the Festival daily paper, Veronika Bednářová, as a lively discussion during which he stood and reminisced about his long engagement at the Vinohrady theatre, where he was accepted soon after graduating from High School, and because of which he chose not to attend the theatre school, DAMU. The conversation turned to people who most influenced him as an actor. “My father, of course, whom I loved. And when I was five, I met Petr Štěpánek and even made my way into the household of my idol Zdeněk Štěpánek. I wanted to be him my entire life.”

There were even reminiscences about the famous Otakar Vávra’s Romance for Bugle. “That was when I first met František Hrubín, who I thought was dead because we learned about him in school. They told me I got the role because my ears were the same size as his,” said Hanzlík. The actor also revealed his plans for the future. Concretely he talked about the film for which he wrote his first screenplay which is supposed to begin shooting this July. “I wanted to write a movie that would be a balm for the soul, a summer romantic comedy to contrast with all those criminal dramas they play on TV,” said Hanzlík about the upcoming movie Summer with a Gentleman.