Eleven years ago, Nahuel Pérez Biscayart won the Crystal Globe for Best Actor at the KVIFF. “I think it’s my only award from an A-list festival. Only the glass ball fell out of the statuette’s arms, so now I have two prizes,” joked the actor, best know for the French drama BPM (Beats per Minute).
This year, he returns to Karlovy Vary with Kill the Jockey, a film that required him to learn professional horse riding. “Jockeys don’t touch the saddle with their butts, they need really strong thighs. I trained for three weeks,” he told the audience. He also spent time with jockeys and described them as a unique sort of people. “They’re big party people, they’re full of adrenaline and other substances. Their circling around the track is a metaphor for life, and there’s no way to escape until an accident happens. And their ability to regenerate is impressive. They’ll break ten bones in a fall and be back in the saddle in two months.”
The film, first launched in Venice, is however far from a classic drama about an indebted jockey, but rather something much more original. “The script changed a lot, and so did my character. For an actor who loves to play, this was a dream come true,” Biscayart said. He admitted, though, that the crew was initially worried whether the elliptical story could be brought to the screen. “Of course, it’s a film about renewal, about change, so all the changes made sense. And I trust Luis, I know he sees more than I do,” the actor praised director Luis Ortega, with whom he collaborated for the third time.
Ortega, he added, is a man who “can convince and confuse anyone.” To illustrate, he mentioned that the absurd tragicomedy, which features a man with a head like a watermelon and includes Biscayart playing a woman, is being distributed in Latin America by Disney+, thanks to the director’s persuasive powers.
