One of the most acclaimed Czech documentaries of recent years is heading abroad. Better Go Mad in the Wild (Raději zešílet v divočině), director Miro Remo’s unconventional portrait of twin brothers living in isolation in the Šumava mountains, opens in cinemas across the UK and Ireland on Sept. 11.
The international release comes a little more than a year after the Czech-Slovak production won the Crystal Globe at the 2025 Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. The documentary subsequently opened in Czech cinemas, where its portrait of brothers Ondřej and František Klišík took on added poignancy following František’s death shortly after the festival.
Ahead of its UK release, Better Go Mad in the Wild has received a warm reception from British critics. In a review published Tuesday, The Guardian’s Phil Hoad calls it a “rowdy, rapturous and brilliant film,” praising its reflections on “family, nature, interdependency and love.”
From the Šumava Underground to Karlovy Vary
Better Go Mad in the Wild follows the Klišík brothers on the remote Šumava farm where they have largely withdrawn from conventional society. Approaching 60 during filming, the twins tend their land and animals, drink, argue, arm wrestle and philosophize about everything from relationships to mortality.
Their secluded existence has an unexpected political background. During the final years of communist Czechoslovakia, the brothers participated in the Šumava Underground movement and distributed anti-communist material. They were later formally recognized by the Czech state for their resistance activities.
Remo discovered their story through the work of writer Aleš Palán and photographer Jan Šibík, but his documentary avoids the conventions of a straightforward biographical profile. Filmed over five years with cinematographer Dušan Husár, Better Go Mad in the Wild instead combines carefully constructed imagery with elements of fantasy and surrealism.
Even its narrator is unconventional: Nandy, one of the brothers’ cattle, is given a voice by veteran Czech actor Jiří Lábus. Elsewhere, František works on a homemade flying machine, the brothers wander through the forest and staged dreamlike passages blur the boundaries between documentary observation and filmmaking invention.
Reviewing Better Go Mad in the Wild for The Prague Reporter, we described it as “strikingly composed,” noting the “affectionate beauty” with which Remo and Husár capture the brothers’ dilapidated cottage and surrounding landscape.
The film’s five-year production also allowed Remo to move beyond the Klišíks’ eccentricities. Beneath their constant bickering, Better Go Mad in the Wild gradually reveals an unusually intimate relationship between two people whose identities have remained intertwined throughout their lives.
British critics discover the Klišík brothers
That relationship is also at the center of The Guardian’s new review, which describes the brothers as “slowly going mad – or maybe closing in on enlightenment” as they inhabit a world increasingly removed from mainstream society.
Hoad highlights the documentary’s unusual mixture of reality and invention, from František’s poetry and perpetual flying machine to sequences in which Ondřej smashes through a mural separating their rooms. Rather than undermining its documentary credentials, those surreal flourishes allow the brothers to participate in creating their own mythology.
The film’s ending acquired a tragic real-world dimension shortly after its Karlovy Vary triumph. František died in July 2025 after being found in a pond in the village of Ohrobec, near Prague, one day after Better Go Mad in the Wild received the festival’s top prize. The film was subsequently dedicated to his memory.
His death also casts the documentary’s recurring imagery of flight, danger and mortality in a different light. František is repeatedly seen wearing wings and a cape, while the brothers discuss death, spirituality and the Cain-and-Abel dynamic they see in their relationship.
The Guardian nevertheless finds something life-affirming in the film, particularly in the brothers’ chaotic interdependence and close relationship with the natural world. Its UK and Irish theatrical rollout now gives Better Go Mad in the Wild a new international platform after its award-winning run at Karlovy Vary and Czech cinema release.
Better Go Mad in the Wild opens in UK and Irish cinemas Sept. 11.
