A teen series with a queer love story

Visitors to the 29th IFF Prague – Febiofest could have a taste of “TBH,” Czech Television’s first web series, on the silver screen. The screening was followed by a discussion with the project’s author and director Lucia Kajánková and three of its actors: Tomáš Dalecký, Vojtěch Franců, and Kanwar Šulc.

This series, set at a high school in the republic’s second city, Brno, has seen screenings in Brno and Prague, as well as at festivals in Estonia and France. “Right after TBH was broadcast on iVysílání, my friends told me it wasn’t such a tragedy – so that means they liked it,” said Dalecký, himself a Brno native. “My workmates at the theater and I spent a lot of time arguing if the teenagers in it were talking like real teenagers,” said Kanwar Šulc of the reactions by people around him. But Lucia Kajánková noted that there is no one universal high-school experience – or dialect. “If there were, that would make things easier for the whole generation,” she remarked.

She herself most appreciated the reactions by actual teenagers. “I’m glad that the themes like being an outsider and the queer love story speak to them and that it’s important for them for a series out there to deal with this,” she said. Answering an audience question on why the show has one queer protagonist, she then answered: “Why not? We found all the characters for ourselves, and it grew organically. We even debated whether people still worry so much today about coming out, but sadly the answer proved to be ‘yes.’”

At the session’s end, all the creators revealed what movies and shows they loved as teenagers. “I watched the Simpsons, Futurama, and the Penguins of Madagascar,” Tomáš Dalecký confessed. “I put on Parent Trap with Lindsay Lohan every summer from thirteen to sixteen,” added Kanwar Šulc. Meanwhile Lucia Kajánková recommended Todd Haynes’ “The Velvet Underground” to one and all.