The story of 13-year-old Paul, who suffers from a rare disease, which causes thick hair to grow all over his face and body, is not the stuff of Marvel comics, director Martin Krejčí says of The True Adventures of Wolfboy. In the director’s US-shot feature debut rising star actor Jaeden Martell takes on the role of loner teen cursed with congenital hypertrichosis, determined to seek out his missing mother despite long odds.
Paul’s lost hope at fitting in at school but he’s determined to get answers, at least. The Czech-born Krejčí says he was drawn to the story because it communicates something universal: loneliness. “I get either such terrible scripts that nobody wants to do them or such weird scripts that nobody knows how to do them,” says Krejčí. “And that was the case of Wolfboy.” Being a commercial director is like a stigma, he says. “You get either big studio movies where you’re a hired gun - and I kept telling them that’s not really me - or you get just scripts by someone who thinks he’s a genius.” In the Wolfboy script, by contrast, each character has their own voice, Krejčí says. “It suddenly sucks you in a little bit.”
You can read the whole interview in today's Festival Daily.
