The Festival President’s Award is given each year to one personality of the Czech film, this year to Ivan Trojan. He will receive it at the closing ceremony on Saturday, but the audience applauded him already a few days before. First, after his performance in the monodrama Frogs and then during the introduction to The Karamazovs, a film personally selected by Trojan for the 58th KVIFF.
“I chose it for three reasons. The first is Lukáš Hlavica, whom I have known since our studies and with whom we founded the Dejvice Theatre. The second is the Dejvice Theatre, without which I would not be where I am today. And the third is Petr Zelenka, who liked the theatre play by Lukáš Hlavica and was thinking about how to capture it in a film. This film combines theatre and cinema – and that’s me,” Trojan explained his choice to the audience at the Municipal Theatre.
A little earlier, in an interview with Erik Tabery in KVIFF.TV Park, he also shared a story from the filming of The Karamazovs: “As the old Karamazov, I’m being murdered. I was banging on the glass filling, my head is bleeding and so on... And I asked if the filling is plexiglass, which just looks like glass. They assured me that it was. The scene was repeated several times and the last time I broke the glass with my head – and it was real glass, not plastic. I survived, but I cracked my head open, and when I looked in the mirror afterwards, I had a shard stuck in my neck.”
The actor also reminisced about his beginnings as a filmmaker at the packed KVIFF Talk. “I was 35 when we shot Loners – and I hadn’t starred in any film before that. But even before at the Vinohrady Theatre, I accidentally overheard a conversation between a director and a costume designer. She told the director: ‘Trojan’s got a bad face for camera.’ That was a big blow to my confidence. What’s more, I often felt at the auditions that it had already been decided and the role will be given to Ondřej Vetchý or Lukáš Vaculík again. So I decided that I would never go to any audition again,” Trojan said. Fortunately for everyone, he got the role in Loners and today he is one of the most employed domestic film actors.
