The 2015 Autumn Issue Hungarian Film Magazine by Hungarian Film Magazine

Hungarian Film Magazine T H E 2 0 1 5 AU T U M N I S S U E

High Hopes After a successful Cannes premiere, Son of Saul is considered to be a serious candidate at the Oscars.

New Documentaries Important issues, high production value, ambitious ﬁlmmakers constitute the new Hungarian documentary buzz.

Talents in Focus Hungarian National Film Fund Incubator Program will help first feature film directors to launch their career with low-budget first films.

Published by

Laszlo Nemes, director of Son of Saul H U N G A R I A N F I L M M AG A Z I N E I

Hungarian Film Magazine All You Need to Know about Hungarian Cinema “Hungarian Film Magazine” is a publication that highlights the latest news, interviews and essays about Hungarian cinema. Printed copies of it are available at the most important ﬁlm festivals worldwide.

Hungarian Film Magazine THE 2015 BERLINALE ISSUE

Hungarian Film Magazine THE 2015 CANNES ISSUE

Hungarian Film Magazine K A R L O V Y VA R Y 2 0 1 5 S U P P L E M E N T

The Year of Hungarian Cinema An in-depth look at the stories and achievements behind Hungarian cinema in 2014

From Berlin to Berlin Filmmakers who got their start here last year

Coming Soon What’s in store for 2015?

Son of Saul The impressive debut feature in Official Competition and the young man behind it

From Cannes to Cannes The makers of last year's White Dog and the new generation of Hungarian cinema

Coming Soon What’s in store for 2015?

Published by the Hungarian National Film Fund

In the Cannes issue you can find a detailed interview with Laszlo Nemes (who appears on the cover page of this issue), the director of Son of Saul, about his references, the process of creating his film and what he thinks about the significance of celluloid:

“The digital image is regressive, deceitful technology. With film, the combination of darkness and projected images induces a physical reaction in the viewer that is absent from digital projection. In a sense, tangible projected film hypnotises the viewer. (...) I personally feel the magic of the physical, chemical processing of film. There is a ceremony in it – creating something from nothing. The image on the monitor is not the image you will get on the screen. This is why I am so interested in film-making.” Find the full interview in the Cannes issue – and all other articles online: www.issuu.com/hungarianfilm You can find us on Facebook too: www.facebook.com/hungarianfilmmagazine II

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Photo by András Németh

High Hopes Since the golden age of Hollywood, Hungarians have always made their voices heard in the world of fi lm. The second decade of the 21st century has also seen a high peak in the international recognition of Hungarian cinema. The year 2015 has been particularly important for those who care for Hungarian fi lm. We were proud when we found out that Son of Saul had been selected for the Cannes competition – something that does not often happen to debut features – but the great start of this remarkable film did not stop there. One of the most prestigious prizes of the Cannes Film Festival, the Grand Prix of the Jury was awarded to the young director Laszlo Nemes’s first fi lm, who has since become the center of attention worldwide. Son of Saul, which is now Hungary’s entry for the Academy Awards, has been selected for a number of North American festivals including Toronto and New York, and has sold all over the world, while Nemes has signed with the United Talent Agency, Having seen the success of Son of Saul and other Hungarian films at international film festivals as well as talent and project development workshops, the Hungarian National Film Fund decided to launch a new initiative. The Incubator Program is established for,emerging filmmakers who are able to receive financial funding as well as advice and encouragement of expert tutors for their first low budget movie. They will be accompanied along the way from the first idea until developing a marketing strategy for their completed films. We hope to spot new talent and see many new debut films realised in the near future. Hungarian fi lm has also enjoyed a revival in Hungarian cinemas: following a successful “back to the cinema, come, sit beside me” campaign, arthouse fi lms like Liza the Fox-fairy and Son of Saul were watched by a record number of people. The quirky, funny and original Liza has seen over 120,000 admissions, while the innovative and haunting Holocaust drama has been watched by over 82,000 people so far and the fi lm is still on. . Respecting the tradition of earlier generations of Hungarian cinema let me announce that some award winning Hungarian fi lmmakers have also started shooting their new movies recently: Marta Meszaros, Jury’s Special Grand Prix winner in Cannes, Montreal Grand Prix winner Arpad Sopsits and Zoltan Kamondi Berlinale contender are all fi lming. Chicago’s Best Feature winner Peter Gardos’s Fever at Dawn will open in Hungarian cinemas at Christmas. The tradition continues while new talents emerge. When we talk about success of Hungarian fi lms we should remember what William Somerset Maugham said: “The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic, and self-complacent is erroneous, on the contrary, it makes them for the most part, humble, tolerant, and kind.” This is how I see Hungarian fi lmmaker-winners. After the international success of The Notebook by Janos Szasz and White God by Kornel Mundruczo our hopes remain high for Son of Saul. Ágnes Havas CEO, Hungarian National Film Fund

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Content 1 4

High Hopes Opening words from the CEO of Hungarian National Film Fund News

Hungarian Film Community

8 10

11 12 14 16 20 22 24 26 29 30 32 34 36

Festival successes, expanding box office and strong service quality The Hungarian Film Support System The Funding System of the Hungarian National Film Fund 2015 – The Year so Far The Media Council Film And Media Funding Scheme Niche Movies – Big Future? Report about recent Hungarian film admissions Incubator Program – New Initiative to Support Debut Directors HNFF supports low-budget feature films First Feature Film Successes Driven by Quality Meet Laokoon Filmgroup, the company behind Son of Saul From Biblical Times to Fantasy Lands In Good Company An interview with the creators and showrunners of X Company Service Productions: A Big Boom for TV

After Cannes Son of Saul – What the Critics Say Understanding the Whole Picture Interview with Mátyás Erdély, DOP of Son of Saul From the Rock’n’Roll Spirit to the Cannes Award About Tamás Zányi, Sound Designer of Son of Saul

38 40 42 46 48 50 54 57 59 61 63 64 67 69 70

Pictures for Words Interview with Fanni Szilágyi, director of End of Puberty Awards from Cannes and Karlovy Vary, Heading to Canada Beyond the Talking Heads – Recent Docu Successes He Wasn’t Even Into Music Interview with producer Gábor Osváth

New Films from Hungary The latest titles in every genre, with cast, crew and contacts Coming soon What to expect: new faces, familiar names and brave topics Feature Film Feature Documentary Short Documentary TV Drama TV Documentary Educational Documentary Short Film Short Animation Animation Series HNFF WORLD SALES | TORONTO LINE-UP HIGHLIGHTS

News Laszlo Nemes Signed with United Talent Agency As soon as Son of Saul won the Grand Prix in Cannes earlier this year, director Laszlo Nemes became a target for the biggest US talent agencies and, a few months later, Laszlo decided to sign with UTA, which also represents Angelina Jolie, Johnny Depp, Joel

and Ethan Coen (who were the presidents of the jury in Cannes) and Wes Anderson. Son of Saul will be screened at the Toronto International Film Festival and at the New York IFF and will be distributed by Sony Pictures Classics in the US. Hungary has already announced the ﬁ lm as its oﬃcial foreign-

Photo by Adrienn Szabó

Filming of Kincsem is Underway After a lengthy pre-production, ﬁ lming is underway for Kincsem, which could be the Hungarian

Spy Flies High After seven weeks in release, the action comedy starring Melissa McCarthy has grossed 109 million US dollars in North America and the global cume is more than $230 million, rendering it one of the highest grossing movies ﬁlmed in Hungary. The record holder is still World War Z starring Brad Pitt, which has a global cume of $540 million. Ridley Scott’s The Martian and Ron Howard’s Inferno will surely

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movie to receive the biggest ever budget. The most signiﬁcant portion of the budget comes from the Hungarian National Film Fund, a total of 6.7 million euros. The period ﬁ lm takes place in the

be added to this list once they are released – the primary location for both movies was also Hungary. Top grossing ﬁ lms ﬁ lmed in Hungary World War Z

2013

$540,007,876

A Good Day to Die Hard

2013

$304,654,182

Eragon

2006

$249,488,115

Hercules

2014

$243,388,614

Spy

2015

$235,603,440 and counting

(worldwide box oﬃce cumes. Source: BoxOﬃceMojo.com)

language submission for the 2016 Academy Awards as early as June. The director is committed to making his next feature ﬁlm in Hungary with the same team he had for Son of Saul, which was produced by Laokoon Filmgroup. The development of the script of Sunset continues progressing to production soon.

1870s and tells the true story of the most famous undefeatable Hungarian racehorse named Kincsem, through the ﬁght of the Hungarian horseman Ernő Blaskovich and the Austrian thane Otto von Oettingen. The biggest portion of the ﬁnancing will be spent on costumes and set design in order to credibly represent the atmosphere of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy in the late 19th century. Gábor Herendi directed some of the biggest hits of the 2000s (A Kind of America 1-2, Hungarian Vagabond), and he also helps in the co-production alongside producer Tamás Hutlassa (Kontroll, Loop). Filming takes place between July and November 2015 at various Hungarian locations.

News Photo by Gábor Valuska

it was legendary director Ridley Scott who talked in front of hundreds of local ﬁ lm professionals and students in February, then Ron Howard and Tom Hanks both came in June for their individual master classes to talk about their careers and methods – each discussion lasting more than three hours.

Master Classes by Ron Howard and Tom Hanks

Howard and Hanks were in Hungary ﬁlming their third Robert Langdon movie, Inferno, but they happily agreed to spend a Sunday afternoon with their Hungarian peers. Both events were moderated by director Madarász Isti, whose long-awaited debut feature, Loop, is in postproduction. Andrew G. Vajna, the Commissioner for Film joined them on stage for the discussion.

The Hungarian National Film Fund’s series of master classes reached new heights earlier this year. First

Previous invited guests include Oliver Stone, Alan Parker, Joe Eszterhas and Nimród Antal.

Large Music Festival, Sziget, Shows Hungarian Films

Tamás Csaba, sound mixer

Houdini Nominated for 7 Emmy Awards The History Channel’s epic mini-series, Houdini, which was entirely filmed in Hungary, received a whopping number of Emmy nominations: a total of seven. Since its original airdate last September, the project received many awards and nominations, but clearly the Emmys are the big gets. Lead actor Adrien Brody and director Uli Edel both got nominated. The five other categories included Outstanding Sound Mixing, where Hungarian Tamás Csaba is among the team as he was the production sound mixer on the movie. The credits of 41-year-old Csaba include Showtime’s The Borgias, NBC’s Dracula and, most recently, the FX series Tyrant – all three of these series are also filmed in Hungary. Besides the talented local crew members and the fi lming locations, Houdini has even more ties to Hungary: star Adrien Brody is half-Hungarian and main character Harry Houdini was also Hungarian, born in Budapest under the name Erik Weisz.

To raise the audience’s interest, several events are on the agenda of distributors and of the Hungarian National Film Fund. #SzigetMovies was one of these initiatives. Budapest’s Sziget Festival is one of the largest music festivals in Europe and is visited by several thousands of young people from all around the word. This year the Hungarian National Film Fund had the initiative to present Hungarian films for free and with English subtitles. A large audience got the chance to enjoy films such as Hungarian box office hit Liza the Fox Fairy, Karlovy Vary Crystal Globe-winning Free Fall or White God, which won Un Certain Regard in Cannes 2014. (You can read more about Hungarian film box office results on page 14).

France and Hungary Sign a New Co-Production Agreement After several recent successful French-Hungarian co-productions, a ﬁlm co-production agreement was signed in Budapest by the governments of Hungary and France, replacing the previous one that was signed in the 1970s. The implementation of the agreement will be handled by the CNC (French National Centre of Cinema) and the NMHH (Hungarian National Media Council). According to the agreement, a mixed committee with experts from both countries will have an annual meeting in order to examine the balance between the countries’ contributions. Canada also signed a co-production treaty with Hungary in 2009.

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The

Hungarian Film Community

The Hungarian film industry is boosted by the results of the first half of 2015. You can read about newly supported films, the Incubator Program for directors making their first featurelength films, and busy service productions.

HUNGARIAN FILM SUPPORT SYSTEM FEATURE-LENGTH FILMS SUPPORTED BY HUNGARIAN NATIONAL FILM FUND

Live Action Feature

Feature Length Animation

Feature Length Documentary

ANIMATIONS, SHORTS, DOCUMENTARIES, TV SUPPORTED BY MEDIA COUNCIL FILM AND MEDIA FUNDING SCHEME

Short and Experimental Film

TV Documentary 8

HUNGARIAN FILM MAGAZINE

TV Film

Animated TV Series

Short Animation

Educational Documentaries

Online Content

FROM ANY OF THESE CATEGORIES?

DO YOU WANT TO SHOOT A FILM? Does it meet the Hungarian cultural test criteria?

Feature Film

Animation Film

Documentary Film

Experimental Film

TV Film

Short Film

WHAT CAN HUNGARY PROVIDE FOR YOU?

tax rebate of your overall production spendings

* 1,000,000

1,000,000

250,000

800,000

200,000

1,000,000

250,000

600,000

400,000

750,000

150,000

* Max. 1,25x of the Hungarian spend

Find more info here: www.mnf.hu/en 22

HUNGARIAN FILM MAGAZINE

THE FUNDING SYSTEM OF THE HUNGARIAN NATIONAL FILM FUND APPLICATIONS

1. Script Development

2. Project Development

DECISION MAKING Application (Script)

3. Production

APPLICATION PROCESS Continuous Applications (No ﬁx deadlines)

Readers (evaluating the scripts) Decision in 60 days

DECISION MAKING COMMITTEE (deciding about the support)

with feedback from readers

and the decision of the Committee

Minority Co-Productions

Production Division (ﬁnancial planning and controlling)

10 10

Script Development Division (developing the supported projects)

HUNGARIAN MAGAZINE H U N G A R I A NFILM FILM M AG A Z I N E

There is no separate call for minority co-productions, but all projects are encouraged to apply with a Hungarian co-producer onboard. Each ﬁlm is judged by the quality of the screenplay and the potential of the project.

Latest Decisions of the Media Council Film and Media Funding Scheme The Media Council Film and Media Funding Scheme has financed more than 500 films or related productions in the past 4 years, and in 2015 a total of 10,227,700 EUR will be given to a wide variety of film, TV and radio projects. These are the categories for tv and film: Educational Documentaries

3 Deadlines *

811,688 EUR

Documentaries

3 Deadlines *

1,071,430 EUR

Historical Documentaries

1 Deadline

422,078 EUR

Short Fiction

1 Deadline

243,506 EUR

Short Animation

3 Deadlines *

584,415 EUR

Animation Series

1 Deadline

811,688 EUR

Tv-Movie

1 Deadline

1,948,050 EUR

Tv-Movie Development

1 Deadline

32,467 EUR

* Deadlines in 2015 were in January, May and August. At the time the magazine is published, only the results for the ﬁ rst round had been announced.

Many of the selections had already been made, so let’s take a closer look! The documentaries and educational documentaries have always been the most popular categories: in the first round this year, a total of 155 and 136 projects applied, respectively. The jury had a tough task at hand, but they managed to select 14 films in each category. Ágota Varga, Zsuzsa Böszörményi, Dezső Zsigmond, Zsuzsanna Szuchy, János Erdélyi and Balázs Simonyi were among the variety of filmmakers whose fi lms received funding. The selection process includes three rounds, the second being a personal meeting between the film-makers 12

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and the jury panel. This is also true for the short animation category, where 42 projects applied and six were selected, including new projects from Béla Klingl, Zsolt Richly, Bálint Gelley and Marcell Jankovics. The biggest budget is for fiction TV-movies, naturally. The decision was announced in May, according to which five fi lm-makers received funds between 133,000 EUR and 380,000 EUR. The fi lms will be ready by the end of 2015 or the first half of 2016 and are being directed by Réka Almási, László Vitézy, Róbert Pajer, Zoltán Bicskei and István Kovács. Development funds for future TV-movies were also granted: a total of 12 projects were chosen. One of the youngest categories is the animation TVseries genre. It is named after Attila Dargay, probably the most well-known name in Hungarian animation over multiple generations. A total of seven projects were selected for this category. The highest amount (237,000 EUR) went to the TV-series Candide, to be directed by Zsuzsanna Kreif. The new series by Ferenc Cakó and Balázs Pál was also funded, as well as four one-off fi lms (to be directed by Roland Tóth, Kinga Rofusz, Katalin Glaser and Viktória Traub). In 2015, the Media Council Film and Media Funding Scheme introduced a new category called Historical Documentaries. The aim was to help create documentaries that can be interesting both in and outside Hungary – in this category, the applicable amounts are higher than the grants in the regular Documentary category. Let us take a closer look at the five projects that were selected! Csanády 21 will tell of the 100-year-old history of a house located in Budapest’s 13th district. The directors’ mother was a young child during the Holocaust when the building was one of the so-called ‘yellowstar’ houses. The fi lm will be the investigation of the directors, sisters Judit and Kata Oláh, not only about

Candide their family’s story, but also about the building before and after WW2. The building has a rich story and we will be able to see what the walls tell us and how the 20th century is present within the one house. Saint Martin’s title character is Martin of Tours, whose 1700th birthday will be celebrated in 2016. He was born in 316 in Savaria, which is now the Hungarian city of Szombathely. He is an emblematic figure in Christianity, yet his achievements have been cinematically undocumented. This is what made Róbert Pajer, a veteran of television shows and documentaries, become interested and therefore want to make a fi lm that is more than just a typical biographical documentary. Patria Nostra, directed by Béla Nóvé, will tell the story of refugee teenagers of the 1956 revolution who ended up in the French Foreign Legion. Although there were hundreds of Hungarians who joined the legion after 1956, Béla’s heroes are a few elderly gentleman who still stay in touch with each other as they all live in the Provence region. Still teenagers at heart, some of them continue to consider coming home to Hungary. The fi lm will tell their stories, and – according to Béla – it will be a “cold war picaresque” with many touching and funny moments along the way. The Virtuoso’s title refers to György Cziffra (1921– 1994), the legendary Hungarian pianist. His life through the 20th century is full of twists, yet his story shows how talent can break out despite all or any obstacles. His life story could be told like a fairy tale,

which is what inspired director Attila Kékesi when he decided to include Cziffra’s grandchildren in the frame story in order for them to tell the stories they were told by their grandfather, as well as how they remember the pianist. The film will also incorporate some filmed reenactment scenes and lots of archival material. Photographs will come to life through the 3D photoanimation technique Kékesi developed while making his earlier documentary, Motalko, a few years ago. And, naturally, the film will be rich in Cziffra’s virtuoso pianist works – all original recordings. Revolt of the Women will tell the suspenseful yet uplifting and even sometimes joyful story of a small village in Serbia during the war in the early 1990s. The majority of the men of Oromhegyes (almost all of Hungarian ethnicity) received a letter to immediately join the Serbian army, but the women – the wives and mothers – forbid them to go. The rebel village was about to face bloody retaliation but the people of Oromhegyes contacted Western journalists and it soon became a media sensation, thus preventing the Serbian army of doing any harm. This is the true story that inspired director István Kovács – a recent graduate of the University of the Theatre and Film Arts of Budapest –, who grew up just a few miles away also on the Serbian side of the border. The young director is currently the busiest of his generation: his graduation movie had its international premiere at the Montreal World Film Festival in late August and he also received funding for a WW1-set TV-movie (see above). by Gábor Osváth H U N G A R I A N F I L M M AG A Z I N E

Liza, the Fox Fairy

Niche Movies – Big Future? Some recent Hungarian films can definitely claim significant results, which might even show us ways of how to make our film industry more successful. People watch them but do they love them? Some of the recent Hungarian films aimed at wide audiences have missed their mark, for example Paw, a family film with good intentions and based on the true story of a famous Hungarian rescue dog, failed to resonate with audiences. However, other films with mainstream appeal did find their audience, such as Argo 2, the sequel to Attila Árpa’s 2004 action comedy Argo, which attracted over 100,000 viewers, most of whom are probably part of the loyal fan base of the original, which was a cult success in Hungarian cinemas as well as on DVD. In December 2013 Coming Out – a romantic comedy starring leading Hungarian actors Sándor Csányi and Kátya Tompos, directed by Dénes Orosz – hit theatres and more than 150,000 people saw it. Another romantic comedy, What Ever Happened to Timi, by Attila Herczeg and starring the international modelturned-actress, Andrea Osvárt, in the lead role, also saw more than 100,000 admissions in the country. Swing, the musical comedy by Csaba Fazekas may not have reached this level but still managed to produce healthy numbers (nearly 90,000 admissions). In a 14

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country with a population of just under 10 million people, these figures are far from bad, though at the same time they are not stellar either. We could argue that both Timi and Swing tried to emulate Hollywood comedies, resulting in films that were a bit generic and lacking any original flavour, which in turn led to less-than-enthusiastic word-of-mouth. People may have bought tickets, but the sense that these were must-see movies just wasn’t there. Movies with personality It was a different story with Liza, the Fox Fairy though. The debut feature of Károly Ujj Mészáros is a quirky romantic comedy set in a fictionalised version of 1960s’ Budapest. It immediately connected with audiences despite its not-so-mainstream black humour and the fact that many of its protagonists die during the course of the film. The tone, albeit somewhat reminiscent of Aki Kaurismaki and certain Danish black comedies, felt fresh, and the film was a revelation to most. The characters were likeable but not schematic and the uplifting ending felt well-earned. It was a film that could be enjoyed by most audiences but was still distinctive enough to generate great word-of-mouth. In hindsight, it’s not all that surprising that with over 120,000 admissions Liza has become the most widely seen Hungarian film of the year so far. Word-of-mouth was also a crucial factor for the phenomenal success of the low-budget For Some

Inexplicable Reason, the first feature of Gábor Reisz. Produced on a shoestring budget of 7 million HUF (21,000 EUR), the film was highly profitable, making more than 10 times its budget. With its unknown, non-professional leading man and very low production values (most of the film was shot guerrilla-style on the streets of Budapest), not many would have guessed that it was to become a niche favourite. Yet its bittersweet coming-of-age story and ironic view of the life of overeducated and undermotivated twentysomethings in present day Hungary touched a nerve with young audiences and more than 60,000 people went to see it. Making an appearance in international festivals doesn’t necessarily translate to box office success in Hungary, and prime examples of this are Kornél Mundruczó’s Delta and Tender Son: The Frankenstein Project, which were both in Competition in Cannes in 2008 and 2010 respectively yet failed to generate much buzz at home. However, last year’s White God, premiering in Un Certain Regard and winning the section’s main prize, did in fact register more. Attracting around 45,000 moviegoers in Mundruczó’s home country could be considered a great win for the arthouse director and it’s not hard to see why a story about a teenage girl and her lost dog seemed like better viewing for some audiences than the film-maker’s previous efforts. Even when you think about the film’s violent ending you can see how it was definitely more easily digestible than his previous film, the emotionally muted and hard-to-fathom Tender Son. The Holocaust film that made a difference This brings us to this year’s great Hungarian arthouse success, Son of Saul by Laszlo Nemes, which started

its international run at the Cannes Film Festival as the only debut feature in Competition and went on to win the Grand Prize of the Jury. With its distinct visual approach (using very shallow depth of field which makes the protagonist, who is always close to the camera, stand out but keeps the rest of the screen blurry), the emotionally jarring Holocaust drama earned high praise from both international and Hungarian critics and film-makers alike, which in this case was enough to generate interest in the audience back home. There was this palpable sense that people not only went to see the movie but were also moved by it, enough to actually think about historical, societal and moral questions, like the Sonderkommando and personal responsibility during the Holocaust. In less than two months almost 80,000 people saw it, which is an extremely high number considering the difficult theme and highly artistic approach of the movie. It’s also the first Hungarian movie that has had a realistic shot at being nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Foreign Language category since 1988, when István Szabó’s Hanussen made the cut. It would probably be a mistake to draw firm conclusions from the performance of a handful of fi lms, but at the same time these results seem to point to the fact that Hungarian films that are directed at a specific niche can definitely find their audience, connect with people and achieve success at a certain level, while mainstream movies with a more general audience in mind might generate only slightly higher box office numbers and tepid reactions. Movies with a special flavour do better. by Bori Bujdosó (VS.hu)

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Incubator Program – New Initiative to Support Debut Directors The Hungarian National Film Fund recently announced a scheme to provide financial and professional help for the debut of first-time directors. The so-called “Incubator Program” will support five lowbudget feature films this year.

The Hungarian National Film Fund (HNFF) has always been keen to support debut directors – many of these projects are already completed and received international acclaim (see box below). There is a much bigger pool, though, as the last few years saw an important number of Hungarian short films conquer international fi lm festivals, yet many of these young directors still haven’t been able to make their first feature fi lms. Some of them haven’t even applied yet, while others have tried but have not been able to get any further than the sometimes lengthy development phase. The CEO of the HNFF, Ágnes Havas, feels that there is a great need for fresh voices, even if their storytelling is more unorthodox than what the otherwise working system of development can handle. Had it not been a graduation fi lm, For Some Inexplicable Reason, directed by Gábor Reisz, would have had a much harder time in getting completed due to the fact that it never had a traditional screenplay. This micro-budget dramedy (which was made from the graduation budget from the Film Fund and Proton Cinema’s own investment) was not only selected for Karlovy Vary, but ended up being a surprise hit at the Hungarian box office. (To see how did the already released first features fared with the audiences and at festivals, turn to page 20!) The HNFF announced the so-called Incubator Program in early July, where young film graduates will be able to apply with only a treatment of the director. This is clearly a much simpler way of applying to the 16

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Film Fund than what projects with a more signiﬁcant budget have to follow – the aim here is to decrease bureaucracy and focus on the ﬁrst-time directors’ projects.

From the anticipated large number of applications, five film professionals will choose 10 projects that will move forward to the pitching phase. Among them are acclaimed director Ildikó Enyedi, upcoming film-maker Yvonne Kerékgyártó and three powerhouse producers: Ági Pataki of Filmpartners, Viktória Petrányi of Proton Cinema and Ferenc Pusztai of KMH Film. They will also serve as mentors to the young directors while preparing for the pitch, where they will be able to present their fi lm idea in front of the representatives of the Film Fund as well as an important number of professionals and students from the fi lm industry. At the end of the day, five projects will be chosen (two by the mentors and three by the professional audience ) to be the fi lms that will definitely go into production. Every selected project will have a producer behind it, in addition to one of mentors who will support the project from script development to completion. The applicants will either find an established partner as producer during the pitch and/or they apply with young producers who don’t yet have a feature fi lm under their belt but who have a degree from one of the five schools mentioned above.

After the pitch, the five directors, along with their writing partners, will move into script development, where each team will receive a total of 6,600 EUR. During this phase, the development committee of the Film Fund will consult with them at least once a month. The teams will also meet with the mentors for consultations and with the marketing professionals of the Film Fund in order to develop the movie’s marketing concept. Once the screenplay and the marketing concept is finished and approved by the Film Fund, the five fi lms will move into production, with each project being able to apply for a maximum of 200,000 EUR (70,000 EUR if it is a feature documentary and 265,000 EUR if it is animation. Keep in mind the 25 % tax rebate: this way the budgets can be 87,000 EUR (for documentary), 250,000 (for narrative feature) or 331,000 EUR (for animation). Therefore a total of five fi lms will be made next year as part of the Incubator Program. The support doesn’t stop there though: the Film Fund will also help with the theatrical release, organising the premiere event as well as providing professional help to put together the movies’ distribution and marketing plans. For Some Inexplicable Reason

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Meet the Mentors In 1989 Ildikó Enyedi won the Caméra d’or at the Cannes Film Festival for My 20th Century, and ten years later Simon the Magician was selected to the Locarno Film Festival. She is one of the most inspiring contemporary Hungarian directors and is also a teacher at the University of Theatre and Film Arts of Budapest. One of her studentswas Gábor Reisz, director of For Some Inexplicable Reason. “The young generation of directors is very lucky because they have some determined allies of young producers’, Enyedi tells us. ‘Within the Incubator Program one can make spontaneous, fresh, shortturnaround and playful ﬁlms made from a modest but not absurdly small amount. These would otherwise be made out of a few million forints with blood and tears or never completed at all.’ Ildikó Enyedi

Among the mentors, Yvonne Kerékgyártó represents the voice of the young generation and is also an emerging fi lmmaker. Yvonne has graduated as a screenwriter, but she is also a director. After some exciting short fi lms, she recently debuted the feature-length Free Entry, a daring lowbudget guerilla movie. The fi lm won the Gamechanger special prize at the SXSW Film Festival this spring. “The first feature of a director is also a business card, so it should have a personal tone,’ she insists. ‘The Incubator Program will hopefully boost the directors’ enthusiasm and launch good filmmakers on international levels; this fund will only be a starting point for them.” Yvonne Kerékgyártó

Together with Gábor Kovács, Ágnes is the producer at Filmpartners, one of the busiest Hungarian production companies. Filmpartners has co-produced Szabolcs Hajdu’s feature films and also Kornél Mundruczó’s Tender Sonand White God. “Many believe that in our day and age it is possible to shoot films on mobile devices too, which can be true if we are talking about showing one’s talent and creativity. However, real professional knowledge, a true deepness of a story or even professional entertainment costs a lot of money. While there has been constant training at universities and colleges for decades, the presentation of the acquired knowledge has become impossible in the last few years. The Incubator Program is intended to fill this gap, providing enough money for the winners to introduce themselves in front of audiences.” Ágnes Pataki

For the young generation of film producers, Viktória Petrányi has shown that it is possible to have a well thought strategy in order to build a high-profile production company. Besides producing all of Kornél Mundruczó’s movies (including recent Un Certain Regard-winner White God), Proton was also behind Ádám Császi’s Land of Storms and the hit low-budget movie For Some Inexplicable Reason. “Step zero is very sensitive for most artists; a limited budget and more freedom are real support for most firsttime directors. The chance is given and the long-term goal is a good one. Our duty now is to prove that there are new talents who are ready to work. We also hope that, as a result of the Incubator, new director-producer partnerships will be bound and everybody will be able to find the suitable environment for their work.” Viktória Petrányi

“The Incubator Program gives a serious help to debut filmmakers who will be able to work under a certain guard-net”, says Ferenc Pusztai, and he certainly knows what it is like to help make first features. Pusztai established KMH Film and started working with young graduates like Attila Gigor and Ágnes Kocsis. The first KMH productions were already great critical successes. Ferenc did not stop working with young graduates, and two years ago he produced Virág Zomborácz’s first feature, Afterlife, and is now in pre-production for the debut films of György Kristóf, Orsi Nagypál and Balázs Lengyel. He is also the producer of György Pálfi’s latest fi lms.

Ferenc Pusztai

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Driven by Quality Laokoon Filmgroup, the company behind Son of Saul Laokoon Filmgroup is a Hungarian production company which successfully managed to create a harmony between film production service and managing own projects, international and national interests, commercials and feature productions.

Behind the smashing success of this year’s Cannes Grand Prix winner, Son of Saul, is a Hungarian company with complex experiences in different forms and stages of national and international film services and production. The name Laokoon, which became a top brand during the last decade, entered the market in 2002 when the firm was founded by Gábor Sipos and Gábor Rajna. The multi-speciality Laokoon Filmgroup, an expert in a variety of genres, has recently been working in two divisions and with different focuses, yet with flexible inner and external connections. One of them is Laokoon Film, the leading company on the market in the field of commercials, putting great emphasis on foreign service productions. The other is its co-company, Laokoon Cinema, which was founded in 2009 and, with its stronger interest in features, documentaries and the challenges that art-house cinema faces, provides support for these kind of productions. The team consists of 10 core members, while Sipos, Rajna and Stalter share the task of managing. They usually work on the basis of the actual project, in constant cooperation, but the main person in charge is always the one whose experience and profile fits best. What makes the company special is the team of 10 people who have been working together for more than 12 years to build Laokoon what it is today. Made by Laokoon With its colourful skill palette, Laokoon Filmgroup has produced, co-produced and serviced feature fi lms, TV fi lms, documentaries, shorts, even graduation movies and commercials for worldwide known companies. 22

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The two Gábors often concentrate on commercials and they were the producers who discovered that the project of Son of Saul must be a great invention. The HBO series Easy Living was one of Laokoon’s latest service assignments backed up by Judit Stalter. Likewise, producing of the films directed by Hungarian director Attila Till were also connected more to her. In the last 4 years numerous European and US feature fi lms were serviced by Laokoon. Laokoon Filmgroup works not only with foreign partners, but also with national productions. Laokoon Cinema runs a special business with the aim to give opportunity to professionals and emerging Hungarian talents at the same time. “We stand for arthouse cinema with pleasure, and within that, for some odd reason, the issues of different kind of minorities.” – summed up Judit Stalter her mission. Her statement seems to be verified, as both Attila Till’s short fi lm Beast and the documentary Men with Balls present the vicissitudes and hopes of the Roma people in the region. The company has recently been working on Kills on Wheels, a full-length drama about a handicapped boy who joins a wheelchair gang working for the mafia. Although these fi lms are not always financially profitable, it can so happen that there are surprises, for which the best example is Son of Saul, of course. Laokoon often works with foreign partners. They have co-produced a few features, but most of all they are very proud of a 5-country documentary coproduction: In the Belly of the City.

Photo by Gábor Valuska Gábor Sipos, Judit Stalter, Gábor Rajna

„Servicing has taught us very different aspects, and highly professional tasks, and we can use this knowledge in case of our movies”- adds Gábor Rajna. Speaking of the vision of the company’s future, Gábor Sipos discloses that the main goal cannot be anything other than staying in the state of constant progress of quality and strengthening the already-acquired skills. “The authentic Laokoon trademark must be ‘quality’. We are driven by quality and we always look for new ways to support it. We are not afraid of associating ourselves with brand new ideas and situations.” Two years ago, when film graduates of the Budapest-based Eötvös Loránd University received support for the first time from the National Film Fund for their diploma projects, we collaborated with the university in order to help the students carry out their plans and develop a successful method of economising resources. For instance, Ricsi, directed by Gábor Hörcher, was one of the films that was made during this period. It is a film that you can find in the short competition programme of this year’s Sarajevo Film Festival. Way of Saul Son of Saul, produced by Laokoon Filmgroup, is in many ways unprecedented in the history of Hungarian cinema. The fi lm was celebrated worldwide for its new kind of approach to the memory of Holocaust and its stunning and provoking audiovisual style. It is the first Hungarian movie to have ever returned the costs before its cinema distribution. As Gábor Rajna and Gábor Sipos explain on the birth

of the fi lm, “Laokoon had been working very hard in different sectors but had been unable to produce its own movie since 2007 when Árpád Bogdán’s Happy New Year was presented at the Berlinale. The day we met Laszlo Nemes and the first version of the script of Saul were like light entering the dark. The scenario and the auteur representing it were both so convincing that we simply couldn’t resist. Although by then it had already been rejected by many other producers, we started to work on it immediately. The period of developing and looking for partners took about 1.5 years, with countless business meetings and a modest success. As we couldn’t find any associates for co-production, every little detail of Son of Saul became our exclusive project, from the very first moment until the last. We find it important that when we started to work with the director, we didn’t want to make any restrictions for the future. We strongly believe in long-term working relationships, but they have to develop naturally as opposed to being regulated by contracts. We entrusted László with the decision of whether or not to continue the collaboration with us, and we are very happy to say that there is no doubt about it.” Laokoon Filmgroup is working on the director’s second feature right now and, of course, the chances for co-production have been continuously increasing since the success of Saul. What makes all this dynamism work? It is clear in their answer: “All of us in Laokoon are obsessed.” www.laokoonfi lm.com by Janka Barkóczi H U N G A R I A N F I L M M AG A Z I N E

Photo by Gábor Valuska Mark Ellis and Stephanie Morgenstern

In Good Company The TV series X Company is once again filming in Hungary – after the hit first season, the Canadian-Hungarian co-production is now back for even more episodes. We sat down with creators and showrunners Mark Ellis and Stephanie Morgenstern to discuss the origins of the series, to see how it is evolving and to find out about their experience with filming in Hungary. Your previous TV series Flashpoint ran for 5 years. How did X Company come to life? Stephanie Morgenstern: Actually it came before Flashpoint. We made a short film, Remembrance, 15 years ago, with the same premise of the spy camp and the memory man. It was the beginning of our work as writing partners and we started to develop it as a feature fi lm. Mark Ellis: In a way we owe a lot to the Toronto International Film Festival because Remembrance premiered there, and they have an event sponsored by Telefi lm Canada called Pitch This! where emerging 26

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fi lm-makers get to pitch their fi lm ideas. We pitched the feature version of Remembrance there and the prize money gave us the support we needed to develop the ideas in a lot more depth. We thought that we were going to be ‘fi lm-makers’ rather than going into television, but during the course of making Flashpoint we really responded to the immediacy of TV, of being able to write a script and two months later of seeing it realised on the screen. It’s quite intoxicating. With X Company we had a choice: do we want to develop it further as a feature or perhaps see its potential in television. We felt that X Company was a story that could live and breathe over an extended period of time, so we chose to develop it for CBC.

You are co-showrunners – what exactly does a showrunner do and what is the work method between the two of you? S.M.: A showrunner is the one who guides the vision that holds the whole series together. We work with multiple directors and actors and creative people who aren’t necessarily involved for the whole length of the show – if there is not a single desire or vision driving the project the series will not feel like a consistent, organic story. We lead the team of writers and try to keep a bird’s-eye view of all the mechanics of the production, so that by the time it’s broadcast, it still all holds together.

M.E.: The trick to showrunning is to surround yourself with the most talented people you can find and then rely on them. They know how to do their job better than you do. You have to be able to trust them, so you can free yourself, pull away, attend to the most pressing matters at hand. If you are not on set one day, you know that a director is going to get what is needed from the script; you hire talented actors who have an instinct for the material, a designer who understands the tone and theme of your stories. If you hire the right people, you don’t need to be there to explain everything every step of the way. S.M.: The showrunner’s work continues into postproduction as well, when you have to make sure that the idea that drove the production is continuing to drive, including music, editing, visual effects… So to answer your question, I guess the one element that stays from the very birth of the idea into when the show hits the air is the showrunner. M.E.: The two of us have a very complementary skillset so we are able to divide the work. My brain is good for stories, for an architecture of an episode and the bigger picture. S.M.: My approach is a bit more analytical, hands-on, while Mark’s area is more broad-strokes, inspirational, generating the stories, being a brainstorm leader of a group of writers and being able to draw the best stories out of them. I love being on that ride as well. But as the stories evolve further and need fine-tuning, and especially when an episode goes into postproduction, the kind of analysis it takes to make the material as strong as possible is where I feel I’m most in my element. M.E. There are certain areas where our instincts are exactly the same, like in casting, so there we are interchangeable.

You filmed your first season of X Company in 2014. How was that experience and how did Hungary come into the picture? M.E.: Because the show is set in occupied France, we knew we couldn’t shoot it in Canada. We knew we needed to shoot somewhere that is able to evoke Paris and smaller villages. France is expensive to shoot in, but Hungary offers really good tax incentives – and to be honest, at a very early stage when we were developing the series independently we literally went to the computer and googled ‘Hungary+filming’. And that was the first education we had. We looked at locations, availabilities and watched films and TV series that have already been shot in Hungary. We discovered that Budapest and Hungary has a film-producing tradition that is in many ways similar to Canada’s. I think Canada’s fi lm and television industry emerged because it was a center for service production and coproduction, especially with the United States. Our crews in Canada are very well-trained, some of the best in the world, and it is affordable to shoot there. Hungary is the same: there are financial incentives and the crew that we work with is as good as we have seen in Canada. Andy Mikita, who is directing Episodes 3 and 4 of the second season, told me that he’s been going around the set taking pictures on how things are done differently here, so he can show his team in Vancouver. He was excited by potentially more effective ways of doing things, for example how electricity is brought to the set. We brought with us a certain core team that worked with us on Flashpoint, we have a really great coproducing partner in Ildikó Kemény and David Minkowski of Pioneer Stillking, and they have really helped us navigate between the differences of the two fi lming cultures and have made everything pretty smooth. A lot of the local crew returned for the second season and they put a lot of passion into the work. We make a feature fi lm every 15 days, five feature fi lms in the course of three and a half months, and it is crazy, and our crews are working through rainstorms and heat waves, and doing it cheerfully. This year you are filming 10 episodes instead of last year’s 8 episodes. What are the other differences between the seasons, story-wise and production-wise? S.M.: In the first season, all five lead characters began with high ideals, with powerful convictions about right and wrong, about who they are and what the difference is between ‘us’ and ‘the enemy’. But H U N G A R I A N F I L M M AG A Z I N E

Photo by Kata Vermes Evelyne Brochu, Dustin Milligan, Jack Laskey, Connor Price and Warren Brown in X Company

as the season unfolded, there was a gradual loss of innocence. In Season Two they are carrying all that experience – the memory and the burden of what they have learned, that nothing is as simple as they thought. That’s why the second season storywise has space to become a lot more psychologically complex. Our heroes have literally all had blood on their hands, and they are questioning themselves, their comrades in arms and everything they used to believe in. They are still driven by hope, but the overall tone is a little darker now. M.E.: Because the stories have taken on this tone, we have also looked at the production elements and how they can also evolve in the second season. We were working with director Grant Harvey and DOP Michael Marshall who brought new ideas and helped us adjust the overall look of the show. In the first season the colours we see in Europe are bright, very primal, but in the second season they are a bit more desaturated, a little more sophisticated, more grown-up. Many of our visuals have evolved, even if it’s as simple as changing a character’s glasses. S.M.: In the last season, especially in the first half, the episodes were more self-contained, one mission each week, with a sense of closure after each. That evolved even within the first season, which got much more serialised as it went on. Season Two takes this even further: every week ends in a sense of questioning and suspense and forward momentum – the feel of ‘to be continued’. This gives us scope for more of a continuing, complex, sophisticated story, where a seed planted in Episode 2 sometimes doesn’t sprout until many episodes later. And now you have your writers’ room in Budapest with you as well. 28

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M.E.: I can’t believe we didn’t have our writers with us for the first season! However it was a bit different the first time around. We had more scripts developed in advance. The turnaround time for the second season was much tighter – we finished post-production in March, and by the end of the month we were writing again, knowing we have to be in pre-production in June. We knew we would be writing while over here, so it was essential to have our writers with us, not just to develop the scripts but to be able to have them represent their own episodes on set or at preproduction meetings. It’s very important to us to empower our writers and make them part of the production process. Last but not least: do you have any strange or joyful stories to share that could only have happened because you are filming in Hungary? M.E.: Everything goes pretty smoothly, so it’s a hard question to answer, but there are magical moments that stick out. As Canadians coming to a European city to fi lm, it’s like somebody opened a big treasure chest for you. There are a lot of times we’re surprised to discover you can fi lm in certain buildings, or that you can walk into an abandoned space and find beautiful marble staircases and mosaic floors. Sometimes we have to do only a little to dress a location for filming, which is a real luxury. In Episode 3 we shot a sequence in which Aurora goes into a very upscale restaurant undercover and sits down at a table with four high-ranking Gestapo officers. We filmed these scenes at Callas restaurant and then we moved outside at 2AM and we were beside the Opera and the night was naturally misty and the lights were ethereal, and I thought: we could not do this anywhere else. by Gábor Osváth

Service Productions: A Big Boom for TV At the time of writing, it is already hard to count the foreign productions 2015 has brought to Hungary – and it’s still only summer. Iconic directors such as Ridley Scott and Ron Howard visited Budapest, and actors like Tom Hanks, Matt Damon, Robert Pattinson, Kristen Wiig, Jessica Chastain or Jonathan Pryce starred in their films. We will have a comprehensive look at all of these great projects in our first issue of 2016, but for now let us write a few paragraphs to highlight the newest trend: an increasing amount of TV shows coming to film in Hungary!

This is nothing new though – only the magnitude of it is. We welcomed TV shows, such as British crime series Maigret (ITV) and Cadfael (ITV) in the 1990s, and the 2000s brought us the short-lived Dinotopia (Hallmark, 2002) and Kröd Mändoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire (Comedy Central, 2009), as well as three seasons each of Robin Hood (BBC, 2006-09) and The Borgias (Showtime, 2011-13). Strike Back was also very faithful to Hungary: they returned for large parts of three different seasons (Cinemax, 2011-15). The first American primetime network TV show that was fi lmed entirely in Hungary was Dracula (NBC, 2013). It is also worth mentioning how many award-winning mini-series have been made in Hungary this past decade (The Company, Pillars of the Earth, World Without End, Birdsong and Houdini), and there have also been several shows that filmed only a few episodes in and around Budapest (Painkiller Jane, Silent Witness, Covert Affairs, Royal Pains, etc.). The boom of the 2000s was thanks to our tax rebate system, and the fact that it was increased (from 20% to 25 %) in 2014 has definitely made Hungary even more attractive. The big Hollywood productions also spread the good word, so it is sort of natural that 2015 brought us more service productions than ever before, and this is especially true for TV projects. Production offices and crews are being very busy for MidAtlantic, as the leading service company for

American projects was working on the second season of Tyrant, the FX series, and filming also commenced in the summer on the Netflix’ Marco Polo’s Season Two. Neither show filmed in Budapest during their freshman season, but both decided to have a large part of their locations (Middle East and Asia, respectively) built on Hungarian soundstages and in the Hungarian countryside. Later this year NBC’s new show Emerald City (a modern take on The Wizard of Oz) will also start rolling, with visionary film-maker Tarsem directing all episodes. Three pilots have also been filmed in Hungary in recent months. Casanova, directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and starring Diego Luna, is already available to be viewed online, and Amazon will decide if they order an entire season based on viewers’ feedback or not. Pioneer Pictures is also behind two pilots. The first, HBO’s Virtuoso, which was fi lmed in the spring – we even got to visit the set with Ildikó Kemény (see our interview with her in our Cannes 2015 issue!). Academy Award-winner Alan Ball (Six Feet Under, True Blood) wrote and directed the pilot, and it takes place in 17th century Vienna. Pioneer is currently fi lming Guilt, a drama pilot for ABC Family. The story is set in London (where it will also be filmed) and is directed by Gary Fleder. There is also the Canadian-Hungarian co-production, X Company, the WW2-set drama series, which is fi lming from July to November 2015 with a total of 10 episodes for its second season. We talked to creators and showrunners Mark Ellis and Stephanie Morgenstern – turn to pages 28-29 to read what they had to say about fi lming in Hungary! Last but not least – not quite a series, but an exciting television project –, ITV commissioned two TV-movies about Maigret, Georges Simenon’s popular character. The crime stories will start filming in September with none other than Rowan Atkinson starring as the French detective. A little less than a quarter of a century ago the character was famously portrayed by Michael Gambon – the show was also filmed in Hungary. by Gábor Osváth H U N G A R I A N F I L M M AG A Z I N E

After Cannes Winning the Grand Prix, the FIPRESCI Prize, the Francois Chalais Prize and Vulcain Award for Best Sound in Cannes was the greatest moment in recent history of Hungarian cinema â&#x20AC;&#x201C; meet the creators of Son of Saul. Letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s also keep an eye out for the new faces of Hungarian documentaries!

Son of Saul – What the Critics Say “This astonishing debut film about a prisoner in a concentration camp being employed in the industrial processes of body disposal is a horror movie of extraordinary focus and courage. A season in hell is what this devastating and terrifying film offers – as well as the chance to meditate on representations of the Holocaust, on Wittgenstein’s dictum about matters whereof we cannot speak and on whether these unimaginable and unthinkable horrors can or even should be made imaginable and thinkable in a drama. There is an argument that any such work, however serious its moral intentions, risks looking obtuse or diminishing its subject, although this is not a charge that can be levelled at Son of Saul”. The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw

“Meanwhile, the harrowing Auschwitz thriller, Son of Saul, which many thought had a good shot at the Palme, grabbed the second-place Grand Prize (not bad for a feature-length debut). By choosing not to give the Hungarian fi lm the highest honor, the jury dodged a different kind of controversy; the movie, which uses an almost square aspect ratio, shallow depth of field and lots of close-ups to relegate much of the Jewish suffering on display to the background, has its share of vocal detractors (including The New York Times’ Manohla Dargis, who acknowledged the fi lm’s technical prowess but called it ‘intellectually repellent’)”. The Hollywood Reporter by Jon Frosch

“Son of Saul develops a powerful edge from the sheer devastating nature of its events, while resisting even the slightest overstatement. Only one quiet shot near the end points the material in a surprising direction, but even when the action abruptly shifts from Saul’s point of view, the nightmare hasn’t ended. Son of Saul asserts that, for so many victims of the Final Solution, it never did. But within that context, Nemes uncovers a semblance of optimism in the very act of perseverance against impossible odds, no matter the outcome”. Indiewire by Eric Kohn

“Telling a story of the Sonderkommando – the Jewish prisoners forced to assist the Nazis in the running of concentration camps – with a level of verite urgency, the 38-year-old director shows how in the right hands even a well-worn genre can be made fresh. Nemes manages to create a quasi-documentary experience of an event that occurred deep in the past and introduce a new cinematic language to stories of catastrophe. In the process, he has evoked a kind of stunned hypnosis inside the festival’s theaters and a tangible feeling of excitement outside them”. The Los Angeles Times by Steven Zeitchik

“Shock! The word may be harsh, even trite, but with regard to Son of Saul, it is not used in vain. Rarely have we had the chance to see a ﬁ lm as mastered both in its directing as in its message”. L’Express by Sophie Benamon

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The proud creators of the fi lm enjoying their red carpet experience. Laszlo Nemes and his colleagues worked on the fi lm for more than five years

“What will Son of Saul win?” – that was one of the hottest topics in Cannes. Finally, the ﬁ lm received the Grand Prix of the Jury, the Vulcan Award for the sound design, the Francois Chalais Prize and the FIPRESCI Award. Mads Mikkelsen was one of the prestigious congratulators.

Géza Röhrig – who played Saul – was one of the most interesting phenomena in Cannes this year. Géza is a poet, not a professional actor: after being the frontman of a Hungarian music band and graduating from ﬁ lm school, he moved to New York. We would not be surprised to see him in other roles.

The colleagues of Laszlo Nemes: Mátyás Erdély DOP (ﬁ nd our interview with him on page 34); Matthieu Taponier editor; Clara Royer co-writer; and Géza Röhrig actor.

Two ﬁ rst feature ﬁ lm directors: Natalie Portman and Laszlo Nemes. A beginning of a beautiful friendship?

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Photo by Gábor Valuska

Understanding the Whole Picture Interview with Mátyás Erdély, DOP of Son of Saul

It was really hard to catch cinematographer Mátyás Erdély for an interview due to his constant travelling around the world for his work. His latest masterpiece, Son of Saul, is a huge international success, and after the Cannes premiere it was invited to Sarajevo, Telluride and Toronto. Not many people know that Mátyás Erdély’s ﬁlm career actually started with him as an actor when he 34

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played the main role in the adaptation of a famous Hungarian writer’s book entitled The Wondrous Voyage of Kornel Esti. There is a scene in the end credits where sixteen-year-old Mátyás is running towards the sea. Twenty years later he is among the best Hungarian cinematographers and is a frequent guest in Cannes, where he has had seven of his ﬁlms presented at the festival, including his latest work, Laszlo Nemes Jeles’ Son of Saul, which won four prizes, among which the Grand Prix. “Cannes was a great experience and I still

cannot believe we are talking about the possibility of the Academy Awards nominations. This is really happening! So far we have reached 80 000 viewers in Hungary, and counting. The whole Oscar nomination is great because we can reach more and more viewers with the buzz around it and that is the most important thing”. Festivals are usually about the director, which Mátyás has absolutely no problem with, but the cinematographer’s work has to speak for itself. “I am so happy to see László emerging with his first feature, it is a beautiful story and still developping. Our next project is in pre-produciton. It will be a Hungarian period drama set in 1910, and I hope we can make it next year. The fi lm language we are using needs time to think it through. The story in Son of Saul is very fundamental, almost like a Greek tragedy, but the fi lm language itself is so strong that you have a whole other experience watching it”. To understand their decisive style, we have to go back to their previous collaboration, With a Little Patience, which is basically a pre-study for Son of Saul. “Patience was a short film, so it was much easier and there was less responsibility: we had the story, we wanted to make it in one shot, in a close-up of a face, and that’s exactly what we did. But creating Saul took five years! We started working on it in 2010, and in the beginning we wanted to use steadicam. László even went to meet the inventor of the steadicam, Garret Brown. We had a long talk with him about what we wanted to do in Son of Saul, and in the end he actually advised us against using it. He was right, we had to use hand-held cameras to create that special style. We were just afraid of it because of all those stereotypic hand-held camera usages. We gave it some thought, though, and finally decided that that was the solution”. Son of Saul was shot on 35 mm, and both László and Mátyás are true believers of celluloid, “László’s work needs the celluloid, and I also believe that it is a deeper experience, a higher quality for the viewer. If a fi lm-maker can work with analogue material, why would they choose less quality? 35 or even 70 mm is an option for film-makers not just for acquiring but also for projection, and I wish more and more directors and DPs chose this format for their stories so we don’t have to see blurry DCPs in the movie theatres. I respect Christopher Nolan tremendously for declaring he would shoot in IMAX in order to give the best available quality to his viewers. James Bond went back to celluloid too. And even better: the other day I was at the Hungarian Film Lab for the new 35

mm copies for Son of Saul when I heard that three new upcoming Hungarian films are shot on 35 mm. Digital technology is like watching a very good quality reproduction of a famous painting: it is not the same and it never will be”. During those five years of working on Saul, Erdély simultaneously finished Tender Son with Kornél Mundruczó, Miss Bala with Gerardo Naranjo, James White with Josh Mond and a TV series called Southcliffe with Sean Durkin. “Pre-production is pretty much just about talking, but it is essential. László is very thorough, so there were no questions on the set, just answers. Every director is different to work with, and I very much enjoyed working with László because he understands every element of cinematography. He is fully aware of the quality of light and, as we were relying on natural light for our outside scenes, we had to wait for the perfect light and László was totally supportive. It is very important for me to get engrossed in the story; I have to know every aspect of it, I have to go through every little detail before I understand the whole picture, and only then do I know where to put the camera. Even if I work with so-called international stars, they are actually very good people. For example, Sean Durkin is a very sensitive, special and kind person. We are stilll in contact and I hope we can work together again soon”. There haven’t been any turning points in his career, as from every project has come from a previous one, although he does admit that the success of Delta was essential in this process. “My work with Kornél launched my international career and I’m grateful for that. Without Delta there would be no Miss Bala, and without Miss Bala, I wouldn’t have my agent”. Mátyás Erdély is represented by United Talent Agency so he gets plenty of scripts all the time. Every script has an info sheet attached with the names of the director, the producers, the actors, the budget and the shooting time. “It is very difficult to find the right project and I feel very few scripts are for me. I’m looking for projects that are bold and have a unique voice and there are not so many like that. With foreign jobs, I also have to consider that I have three kids, so it has to be a really good one for me to leave my family for such a long time. In Hungary I work with a small group of people, most of whom are close friends and, as a matter of fact, I am still working a lot more abroad”. Mátyás’s next project will start in October: Hier by Bálint Kenyeres will be seven weeks of shooting in Morocco. by Anita Libor H U N G A R I A N F I L M M AG A Z I N E

From the Rock’n’Roll Spirit to the Cannes Award About Tamás Zányi, Sound Designer of Son of Saul

Sound designer Tamás Zányi, who recently received the Vulcan Award in Cannes for the sound of Grand Prix-winner Son of Saul, started his career as a high school music teacher and jazz-blues musician. He claims that his musical past plays an essential role in his success as a sound designer. Having a rock’n’roll spirit in his heart and an exceptional musical ear for the world, Tamás Zányi first started out as a high school music teacher by day and a guitarist by night. It was only after a couple of years that he ended up becoming one of the most influential and most unique Hungarian sound designers in Hungarian film history. For his latest work, the 2015 Cannes Grand Prix-winner, Son of Saul (dir: Laszlo Nemes), he personally received one of the prestigious Cannes awards, the Vulcan Award for Technical Artist, for the “outstanding contribution of sound to the narration of the movie”. His story appears simple: “I was a bit overwhelmed with teaching music so I left the school, sold my double bass, my amp and my banjo and applied for the first-ever Sound Designer programme at the University of Theatre and Film Arts in Budapest”, Zányi explains. He soon became very popular among other students, not only because his first shooting gear consisted of a microphone attached to a bright orange window cleaning pole, but also because he was always up for any crazy, unofficial and unusual fi lm project. This was one of the main reasons that his schoolmates and other emerging directors, like the Berlinale Grand Prix-winner Benedek Fliegauf (Dealer, Milky Way, Womb) and the Karlovy Vary-winner György Pálfi (Taxidermia, Freefall), chose to work together with Zányi for their first movies. Though Pálfi’s first feature fi lm, the almost dialogue-free and musicless Hukkle (2002), would have provided a huge challenge to even 36

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the world’s most experienced sound designers, Zányi, a beginner in the field, successfully created a highly memorable sound for the movie (it immediately received the prize for Best Sound at the Hungarian Film Week). Hukkle, though one of Zányi’s first works, already displayed many of his strengths. Thanks to his exceptional sensitivity for natural and acoustic sounds, he is able to build rich and meaningful sound textures by mixing several layers of natural sounds together, from the windy sounds of a wheat field to the ringing sounds of a corridor. “I had received a very thorough but liberal musical training. I was more interested in my jazz and blues classes than in the conventional Hungarian musical training, the strict Kodály method. I think that this has helped me a lot in discovering that even noises can have their own melodies and own pitches. I use this a lot in my work, many times unconsciously.” Because of this musical background, he approaches sounds in a more analytical and complex way, which means that not only he hears an interesting melody in every door slam, but he is also able to convey and enhance all kinds of moods and emotions through sounds or through series, textures and patterns of sounds. His latest, award-winning work in the powerful Holocaust movie Son of Saul is a typical, yet outstanding Zányi work. Since the camera sticks to the face of the main character during the whole movie almost, we don’t see much of the scene or of the surrounding actions. Due to this, sound plays an unusually important role in showing everything that we cannot see on the screen. “In fi lms where you see everything on screen, sound usually has less importance. It becomes redundant information, as in many cases it only repeats what we can already see on the screen. For us the magic

In Son of Saul we see all of this in action. The film is said to have received the most sound post-production work in the entire Hungarian film history. Tamás Zányi and the young director Laszlo Nemes worked for four months in a row on the sound of the film. “Nemes is a very thorough director. Just like me, he really believes in sound, and he cared so much that he sat next to me during the whole four months of the postproduction. He was not only supervising the process and enriching it with his thoughts but he was almost like a sound designer and sound assistant too. When I was busy editing a certain part, he was going through my sound bank looking for additional sound samples that we could use. It has been a great adventure.” They ended up using more than 270 tracks in the sound mixing programme. “I know it sounds like a lot, but these add up easily. For example, there’s the

crematorium, a dominant scene in the movie for which you cannot use a ‘crematorium sound’ because there is no such sound. So you start to mix together sounds like crackles of fire, growls, hisses, people’s shouts, screams and in the end you end up with 12-14 layers, only for the ‘atmosphere’ of the crematorium.” With its unique world of sound, it was no surprise that Son of Saul received the Vulcan Award for Technical Artist in Cannes, on top of the Grand Prix. The reviews of the fi lm were celebrating Zányi’s work, and as one critic pointed out, “Zányi does his work on a Hollywood level of quality but with the sensitivity of an Eastern European artist.” So what does a rock’n’roll-spirited sound designer think after receiving one of the world’s most prestigious awards in his field? “I really appreciate this award, it means a lot to me. But I don’t think it will change my life. I will continue making films and waiting for the next crazy, unusual fi lm project to find me so that we can create something interesting again.”

by Barna Szász

Photo by Gábor Valuska

usually starts when there is less shown visually, where you can use sounds to alter or to expand the meaning of certain things, where you can show what’s not visible on the screen and where you can create whole worlds simply by adding sounds to the ﬁlm”.

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Pictures for Words The short film End of Puberty by Fanni Szilágyi was selected for the Short Cuts Programme of the Toronto International Film Festival. She talks about her inspirations and about being a female director in Hungary. End of Puberty was made with the support of Hungarian National Film Fund.

What is the inspiring idea behind End of Puberty? This is a coming-of-age movie based on a short story written by Réka Mán-Várhegyi, a young and talented author whose first book has recently gained great recognition in Hungary. Last year, the teacher of our master class of university, Péter Gothár, set us the task of choosing a work written by a contemporary writer for transfer to a workshop fi lm. I absorbed the contemporary literature, reading all the time, but I couldn’t find the right material, the story which is personal in such a way that I can also add something valuable to it. In parallel, I got an assignment from a literary organisation to create a book trailer for MánVárhegyi’s writings, so I started to read them and form an impression on their mood. End of Puberty is the very first story in the collection and I was so astonished by its familiar tone that I immediately decided to adapt it into a script. I was very lucky with this job, not only because book trailers are an interesting genre in themselves, but also because I discovered a book that mirrored myself and my teenage memories about the vibrant but elusive nineties. I’m currently working on my graduation fi lm, which is also an adaptation from a Mán-Várhegyi piece dealing with a young girl and her problems. Although this girl will be a bit older than the heroines of End of Puberty, it seems that I’m still closely engaged with stories about growing up. 38

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Your studies at the University of Theatre and Film Arts in Budapest are far behind you. What was the most important experience that took you there? After I was graduated from high school I left Hungary to study in Denmark for a year. That year was a time when I got to know myself better and also when I finally decided that I wanted to deal with art in some way. When I moved back to Hungary I enrolled in the photography programme at the University of Kaposvár, where I got the basic visual knowledge that greatly helped me at the entrance exam of the cinematography programme in Budapest. I first got a Bachelor’s degree in cinematography but then changed to directing in the Master’s programme. If you are a female cinematographer and you have to bear extreme situations and carry heavy tools, etc., everyone feels an urge to help you, therefore don’t request anything that could be embarrassing or painful for you. This soured my life during the three years of my cinematography studies. It is very hard to deal with, but if you want to be a female cinematographer (which is worth a lot) you have to be prepared for it. Since there was no director class as such that was offered in the BA training, we would work together in each other’s films, always changing roles. This meant that we could all try others out, leading me to direct my classmates’ shorts. I now work in both cinematography and directing. I have to add that I’m

Photo by Gábor Valuska

very grateful to the teachers of my master classes, Tibor Máthé of cinematography and Péter Gothár of directing, because both of them gave me the essential of the philosophy of film-making. To what extent do you contribute to the work of your cinematographers? To tell you the truth, I love directing, but I also miss cinematography. I always try to moderate myself, but I’m not sure that I succeed. End of Puberty is a double story by two cinematographers, Kristóf Becsey and Nándor Gulyás. Even though we had discussed everything, I concentrated more on the actors than on the technical details of creating the pictures during the working process. The perfect cast, the rehearsals and working out how to act naturally were extremely important here. Anyway, in the age of light cameras and mobile devices, I think that every filmmaker must to some extent be familiar with picturecapturing techniques. You don’t have to control every tiny detail, of course, but you can’t be an amateur either. A comfortable solution is to place complete trust in your cinematographer, to lay down some of the stress and strains, but I really don’t know anyone who follows this method. In this fi lm, the biggest challenge was shooting at sunset. Together we had to come up with a solution

as to how to compress every important item in the golden 15 minutes. I tried to work with the theme of the sunset in other scenes as well; you can see, for example, a picture on the wall of the flat of the block house. Pictures and words enhance each other all the time, and this is how you get from a well-set written short story to a movie with intense visual style. Do you have any role models among the rich heritage of female Hungarian authors? I especially like the works of Ágnes Kocsis, but her method is very different to mine. For me as director, Ildikó Enyedi is defi nitely the most important Hungarian female director, and her art, thoughts and attitude meant a lot to me during my progress in the creative field. And although this is an example from outside of Hungary, I must also mention Andrea Arnold, who is the director of the amazing movie Fish Tank. Th is fi lm was one of my basic recent experiences, since its strong and fresh style can perfectly capture the stormy soul of a teenager and the hopeless atmosphere of the metropolitan outskirts. Although I may not be consciously focusing on women’s issues, I feel that my true voice can be no other than personal and deep-routed in my womanhood. by Janka Barkóczi H U N G A R I A N F I L M M AG A Z I N E

Awards from Cannes and Karlovy Vary, Heading to Canada The revival of Hungarian film hasn’t gone unnoticed over the last few months. Feature films, shorts and documentaries have been conquering the most important film festivals worldwide in 2015. A deeply disturbing story with a central focus not unlike an ancient Greek drama in the Dantesque background of Auschwitz; the first, tentative sexual experiments of a pair of adolescent twins; a surreal, feminist animation with catfighting women and a lot of naked men with large moustaches – to mention but a few of the many innovative and original films Hungary has contributed to world cinema since the beginning of the year. Limbo Limbo Travel

The first and probably the greatest surprise of 2015 has been Son of Saul, the debut feature of Laszlo Nemes, a powerful drama which was selected for the competition programme in Cannes – a line-up where one doesn’t often come across first films. Son of Saul was shot on 35mm and in the old 4:3 aspect ratio, which lends the film an eerily deep and haunting cinematic style. The terrifying and powerful sound effects are unlike anything audiences have heard before. Sound engineer Tamás Zányi snapped up one of the four prizes the film received at Cannes: the The Vulcan Award of the Technical Artist (which went to Zányi), the FIPRESCI Prize, the Francois Chalais Award and the Grand Prix of the Jury – the second most important prize at the Festival de Cannes. After Cannes came Sarajevo, where Son of Saul received the Special Jury Prize, and after Sarajevo comes Toronto, with hopes for an even greater worldwide recognition for this remarkable film. 40

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The Wednesday Child

Since his Cannes entrance, Nemes has since signed with the United Talent Agency, joining the ranks of Hollywood stars such as the Coen brothers, who were the presidents of the Cannes Jury this year and who decided to give the Grand Prix to the young director. Debut features seem to be the thing in Hungarian cinema right now – besides Nemes’ masterpiece, another two have been recognised internationally: Liza the Fox-Fairy, directed by Károly Ujj-Mészáros, and The Wednesday Child, Lili Horváth’s ﬁrst feature. The former has been screened and awarded at festivals all over the world, including Portugal, Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, Serbia, Brazil and the USA – audiences and juries alike have praised the quirky and fresh humour and the inspiring and original visual world of the ﬁlm. The Wednesday Child premiered at the A-category festival of Karlovy Vary: this

The Sound of Concrete

beautifully photographed socio-realist drama about a teenage mother deciding to take her life into her own hands went on to win the top prize of the East of the West competition of the festival. The same competition in Karlovy Vary welcomed another Hungarian feature, Zero by Gyula Nemes, a shockingly diverse cross-genre film: melodrama, comedy, road movie, action film. At times parodistic, at times simply funny and at other times dead serious, Zero conveys a responsible and important message about protecting the environment and includes surprising interactive elements involving the audience. The A-category festival of Sarajevo saw the same topic discussed from several different points of view and the unusual phenomenon of one young director competing with two different formats. Gábor Hörcher’s Ricsi, a minimalist short fiction film introduces a young Roma boy who wants to leave his home and escape his life but doesn’t quite know where to go, apart from just away. Drifter, the director’s other entry focuses on the same problem but from a completely different approach: it is a feature documentary that has previously won first prize at the Amsterdam Documentary Film Festival where the Jury emphasised the outstanding quality of the fi lm’s photography and its refined sound design and editing. The 72-minute-long documentary focuses on a young boy with Roma, German and Hungarian ancestry who decides to break out by becoming a rally driver. Drifter raises urgent questions of the integration possibilities of young generations living on the periphery of Hungarian society. Sarajevo’s other Hungarian competitor, the documentary Tititá (directed by Tamás Almási) offers another possible solution to the same

problem: leaving behind a life of hopelessness through the power of musical talent. Tititá follows the path of a Roma boy talent-spotted by the famous Hungarian musician and teacher Ferenc Snétberger. The film received the special Jury Prize for competition programme documentary at Sarajevo. Hungarians have always had a soft spot for animation and a strong tradition to go with it – 2014 was a particularly successful year with Réka Bucsi’s Symphony No. 42 selected for a record number of fi lm festivals. 2015 followed suit with Limbo Limbo Travel, a surreal and crazy animated short of 16 minutes created by co-directors Zsuzsi Kreif and Bori Zétényi: a nightmarish hallucination involving mad amazons fighting for the attention of moustachioed (and this is an understatement!) men living in perfect, zen-like harmony with Mother Nature. Limbo Limbo Travel has been selected for festivals worldwide, including the Krakow Film Festival, the Seattle International Film Festival and the prestigious Annecy Festival. Hungarian cinema has a lot to look forward to in September: two short films – Station by Csaba Vékes and István Kovács’s The Sound of Concrete have been selected for the Montreal World Film Festival, along with an 88-minute historical mystery drama based on the puzzling story of the 1914 murder of a beautiful young prostitute (Demimonde, directed by Attila Szász). And, to represent Hungary in Canada for a little while longer, Laszlo Nemes’s Son of Saul and Fanni Szilágyi’s short film, End of Puberty, which is a beautiful and sensitive portrayal of the first, tentative sexual encounters and summer rivalry of a pair of twins, will both be screened at Toronto. by Zsuzsanna Deák H U N G A R I A N F I L M M AG A Z I N E

Stream of Love

Beyond the Talking Heads – Recent Docu Successes Talking heads, static, sharpless pictures and muzzy dramaturgy – these have been the stereotypes of documentaries in the past few decades. Of course – as in the case of stereotypes generally – it is not entirely true, but seeing the newest streams it is really time to reconsider the approach for documentary film-making as pieces of art and products of entertainment. Hungary has a rich tradition of documentary films. Especially in the 70’s during the communist times when it was one of the rare ways to deal with social issues, focusing on poverty, family problems, history and other topics which were too inconvenient for the official, State-controlled press. Documentary as a genre was so influential that in the second half of the 70’s, fiction films were made with non-professional actors or took place in real-life situations. This style of filmmaking were labelled as the Budapest School by the international press, and legendary directors like Béla 42

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Tarr or Gábor Bódy hallmarked the movement, as well as other important directors such as Sándor Sára, István Dárday and Lívia Gyarmathy, among many others. This period defined the style and approach of Hungarian documentary film-making, and the successes continued. At the annual Hungarian Filmweek, more awards were being won by documentaries than by fiction fi lms. However, after 1989, the structure of media and publicity changed: TV and radio became much quicker and deliberated from political censorship. At the same time, most of the documentaries remained old-fashioned, slowpaced films, which lead to the loss of their audience in Hungary. The fi lms did not fit into the scheme of the new distribution standards and many directors did not have the intention to apply certain changes without losing the independence and the relevance of their works. There were many exceptions, of course: Tamás Almási, Ferenc Moldoványi, Ágnes Sós or Ágota Varga, who started their career in the 90’s,

gained international attention and had successful works in cinemas or on television, but in general the reputation of documentaries among wide audiences was really quite poor. Perhaps it is not an exaggeration to say that recent times can be very promising regarding Hungarian documentary films. The structure of financing TV documentaries has been stabilised in the past few years with three annual deadlines by NMHH. Featurelength works are supported by the Hungarian National Film Fund, with continuous deadlines and frequent opportunities for project development. There is a very significant worldwide company, HBO, which finances and coordinates several projects per year; its presence on the market means more than just a financial supporter, as applying the standards of the company results in high production value and careful realisation and distribution of the films. The appearance of HBO was a significant change for the industry as a whole. These opportunities – combined with the potential of international co-productions and EU grants – mean a great deal, particularly for the younger generations. Their success is following the lead of the mid-generation documentary film directors’ results, for example the earlier-mentioned Tamás Almási and Ágnes Sós, who are strongly involved with young film-makers, both as teachers and as peers. Ágnes was one of the first directors who had the chance to have films produced by HBO (Invisible Strings: The Talented Pusker Sisters and Stream of Love) with young producer Julianna Ugrin. Stream of Love had a long and fruitful festival run, including a premiere at IDFA, winning an award in Zagreb and being selected for the Sarajevo International Film Festival. Stream of Love provides a heartwarming panorama about elderly women from a small village in Transylvania talking about their sexual life. The picturesque landscape and the clean freshness of the protagonists create a very special atmosphere for the film. Stream of Love is a great example of a documentary that can represent a topic without stereotypes or pathos, but with humour and sensitivity. Ugrin also produced Tamás Almási’s latest feature documentary, Tititá, which was just premiered at the Sarajevo International Film Festival where it won the Special Jury Prize. Tititá focuses on two subjects; on the one hand it shows the rich tradition of Hungarian music and music pedagogy, while on the other it talks about one of the most important Hungarian social problems: the perspectives of a talented Gypsy boy from a disprivileged area. The two topics are connected by Ferenc Snétberger, a world-famous guitar player who opened his talent centre a few years

tititá

ago, which helped the young protagonist, Anti, break out from his circumstances. Just like Stream of Love, Almási’s fi lm exposes interesting characters with humour through a twisting story. The success of Julianna Ugrin as a producer does not end there. She has a strong international network after participating at several workshops and being an emerging producer in 2014. She is now part of the prestigious EAVE workshop with the project Afterglow to be directed by Noémi Vera Szakonyi. According to the synopsis, it will be a deeply personal story of the director herself: “The biggest task in my life was finding my missing brother, and the only way I could fulfill this mission is to tell it with my tool, which is film-making”, says Noémi, whose brother was kidnapped by his father back in 1987; she found him 28 years later in Brussels. The film is being developed at EAVE, co-produced by HBO and is to be premiered early next year. The collaboration between Sára László and Marcell Gerő started back at the University of Theatre and Film Art of Budapest where they were classmates. They founded their company Campfilm in 2008, which is now one of the most important hubs of talented documentary fi lm-makers in Hungary. They have produced more than 12 documentaries, besides successful shorts and TV productions. Their recent big hit was Cain’s Children, which had its debut at the San Sebastian International Film Festival and was followed by many other significant festival appearances: IDFA, Abu-Dhabi, Zagreb Docs, Triest IFF and Sarajevo IFF. The fi lm is a French-Hungarian co-production (with the participation of ARTE and HBO Europe), was supported by the MEDIA programme of the European Union and directed by Marcell and produced by Sára. Cain’s Children is about three men who committed murder when they were children. They passed their entire youth in the most brutal prison of Communist Hungary where they were first filmed in 1984 by András Monory Mész in the documentary entitled H U N G A R I A N F I L M M AG A Z I N E

Cain’s Children

Fallen. Marcell and Sára made an enormous effort to find them in order to figure out what had become of them and to ask them about untold secrets, fate and legacy. Is there real hope for them? This might be the biggest question in Cain’s Children, which gives a cruelly sharp picture of today’s Hungary and the strength of its society; the story is told with the tension of a welldramatised thriller. After Cain’s Children, Campfilm just premiered its latest documentary in Sarajevo, Harm by Dénes Nagy, which is about women who harm themselves in several different ways. There is a great chance that it could have a long festival run too. Gábor Hörcher is one of the most recognised talents of this year. It is already enough to mention that he has had two fi lms in two separate competitions in

Drifter

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Sarajevo this year. Ricsi in the short competition and Drifter among the documentaries. The Bosnian capital has not been the first stop for this documentary though, as it won the award for the best first film at one of the most prestigious IDFA festivals and, among many others, a special mention at goEast Wiesbaden. The production was supported by a Robert Bosch coproduction prize and realised as a German-Hungarian co-production. Drifter, which had been shot over a period of five years, portrays a young rebellious Hungarian man called Ricsi who takes his life into his own hands. He has always been in trouble, partying hard and driving cars without a licence, as he receives no understanding or support regarding his circumstances. Once again, a sharp picture is given of the country, but this time in a very fresh and colourful way. It is very complex work from a debut director, not to mention that Gábor has managed to deal with this topic and protagonist twice, both in a unique and rich way. It is no coincidence that his successful short fi lm is entitled Ricsi. Besides the productions, there are international workshops (Duna DOCK, co-organised by Julianna Ugrin) and fi lm festivals (BIDF, co-organised by Ágnes Sós and Rita Balogh, and Verzió Film Festival) happening all over the country, which create a buzz around documentaries in Hungary. Taking a look at the projects in production and all the ambitious filmmakers around, we have high hopes for the future of the documentary genre. by Dániel Deák

Director-producer Mátyás Kálmán and producer Agnes Horváth-Szabó attend this year’s Ex Oriente Film workshop, which is being held in three different cities (Rijeka, Jihlava and Prague) between July 2015 and March 2016. We talked with the duo before the second workshop session to discuss their project, Paying a Visit to Fortuna, which is an intimate look into the life of a middle-aged Hungarian couple who were living in deep poverty but have recently won millions at the lottery. How did you meet the couple who became your two protagonists? Matyas: In the autumn of 2013 when we were searching for interesting characters for our previous documentary (HNYH – Happy New Year Hungary, a collaborative documentary written and directed by Julia Halasz and Matyas Kalman), a social worker friend of mine told me about Laci. When I first met Anikó and Laci it was obvious to me that their story had to be told. I realised that all the experiences and life background they have would be too difficult to recount in the narrow frame of a collaborative documentary. So I decided to make a creative documentary about the couple. How much have you shot until now and how far are you with this project? Agnes: Matyas started shooting with the family in May 2014. So far we have 80 to 100 hours of footage. In spring we cut the first trailer and we started applying for funding and for pitching sessions. We first presented the project at the DunaDOCK pitching forum, an occasion that revealed the project to some professionals as well as to the Executive Producer of Documentaries at HBO Europe, Hanka Kastelicova. Since then we have signed a development contract with HBO. This summer the fi lm project was selected for the Ex Oriente Film workshop and the Doc Lisboa forum. We are aiming to find international broadcasters in order to maximise our chances of selling the fi lm abroad. We mainly want to establish the budget with the support of TV channels, but

Photo by Gábor Valuska

The Two from Ex Oriente it’s important that this fi lm is going to be a featurelength documentary. Matyas: At the moment the most important thing is to create our crew. HBO’s support helps us with this as well as with the processing of the existing footage. I also hope that we learn a lot during the consultations and the feedback we receive. Based on the existing footage I have seen, the genre of the film is an Eastern European tragicomedy. Matyas: Humour and self-reflection are indeed important elements of the fi lm. The story is a contemporary fable, only it goes beyond. Agnes: Playing the lottery is an endemic. If we succeed in distributing the fi lm to a wide audience, then it can reach those who may see their own lives in this drama: the struggle with addiction, being an outcast and the fight for happiness. What are your impressions after the first session of Ex Oriente Film workshop, and what feedback have you received so far? Matyas: Fortunately, the core idea of our project is easy to communicate and there is a big interest shown in the future of this couple who wins at the lottery. At the moment, creating the structure of this fi lm is our main task and we got some interesting and constructive suggestions for it. This kind of workshop helps us – besides networking – to see our place in the world of documentary and also on the market. Agnes: During the first session we got to know several projects from the CEE region. It’s really instructive and refreshing to see all these different projects and different creative attitudes. Thanks to the professional help of Ex Oriente and the development funding of HBO Europe, we are able to develop the fi lm project within very fortunate and ideal circumstances. By next spring we hope to meet all the financial needs for the production of the fi lm. by Genovéva Petrovits H U N G A R I A N F I L M M AG A Z I N E

Photo by Gábor Valuska

He Wasn’t Even Into Music One of the busiest young producers in Hungary, Gábor Osváth, whose debut feature Balaton Method recently hit theatres. He is now preparing for the Emerging Producers programme of Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival.

Before and during his school years, Gábor Osváth worked in dozens of smaller and bigger productions, ranging from a banned local sitcom to Angelina Jolie’s directorial debut. He still claims that he never wanted to be a producer and applied to the University of Theatre and Film Arts (SZFE) to be the best production manager in Hungary. ‘But then I met some great PMs, whom I now consider my mentors. However, I did not like the kind of movies Hungary was making – and I ﬁgured it must be because the producers are not daring or creative enough. So I guess I was stuck-up enough to become one. It might have helped that the ﬁrst short he produced during his years at SZFE, Here I Am, was selected into the Cannes Cinefondation, and later became a European Film Awards nominee. It was also the beginning of a friendship with director Bálint Szimler and DOP Marcell Rév – but more of that later. Meet Filmfabriq

first feature, the dramedy To Be Renovated, recently received development funds from the Hungarian National Film Fund, while the documentary What a Circus – financed by the Media Council’s Film and Media Funding Scheme – is now fi lming in Budapest. Gábor keeps telling us that he does not even like music that much, yet he is well known for his music projects. The feature-length music doc Balaton Method (directed by Bálint Szimler) debuted in Hungarian cinemas March 2015 to great buzz, and the fi lm is still touring the country. ‘It was easily the most challenging project I ever had to face. I kept telling myself: come March, I will have a long-long break and not do anything, especially nothing music-related!’ So naturally in April 2015 the pilot for the music docuseries Songs of the Land started filming in the Ukraine, directed by – once again – Szimler and NFTS-graduate Péter Akar.

In 2012, Gábor formed his company Filmfabriq, which has since become a well-known name among young ﬁ lm-makers who need help for their short ﬁ lms. Filmfabriq has collaborated on more than a dozen shorts in the past three years, almost all in co-production with SZFE. The most recent one, The Sound of Concrete, debuted at the Montreal World Film Festival late August of this year.

‘Songs of the Land is the project that I know will last for years, but I’m open to this new challenge. We go to undiscovered places in countries like the Ukraine and Russia in search of folk music, to record it live – but it is so much more. It needs to be a big co-production, so along with my fellow producer Rita Balogh, we are looking for partners for this amazing journey. Being chosen as one of the emerging producers in Jihlava is a great honour – and also an amazing opportunity to be around people I can learn a lot from.’

Filmfabriq also produces commercials and music videos, but Gábor now enjoys “outsourcing” these to his colleagues so he can focus on ﬁlms. Their

However, Balaton Method and Songs of the Land are not even Filmfabriq projects – they are being produced by Boddah.

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Balaton Method

…but what is Boddah? ‘Running two companies is strange, but it happened organically’, Gábor tells us, mentioning how his friends and former Here I Am collaborators, Bálint Szimler and Marcell Rév, wanted to start something from zero, and he would have been crazy not to want be part of it. ‘So now, if anyone asks, I say Boddah is like a boutique production company: we have a small slate of projects, but we try to “workshop” them together’, says Gábor. After Balaton Method, they are now developing Bálint’s first feature as well as Péter Szeiler’s. Just a few days ago they made a short film directed by György Mór Kárpáti (Gólyatábor, a coproduction with Proton Cinema), and now they also have an animation. Yes, even an animation, because live action fiction and documentary projects were just not enough. ‘I never thought I would try it, but Réka Bucsi had such an amazing project that we couldn’t resist. We secured financing quickly, have a great partner from France in Passion Paris and we are now deep in production. I am still learning it’, says Gábor about LOVE. Director Bucsi’s previous short (Symphony no. 42) was at the 2014 Berlinale and was also shortlisted for the Academy Awards – so it looks like Gábor chose the right director to try animation with. Full disclosure: Gábor is also the co-creator of the Hungarian Film Magazine and still collaborates on articles, even in this issue. As if he had the time for that.

The Previous Emerging Producers of Hungary Since the debut of the Emerging Producers, two Hungarian producers have been chosen to participate. We asked them how it was useful for their careers. Sára László was the first Hungarian participant in 2013. ‘The days spent in Jihlava during the Emerging Producers programme was a great environment to get to know fellow producers and find out about their work and approach through discussions about our role in documentary fi lmmaking as European independent producers’, Sára tells us. At her production company called Campfi lm, they are currently working on the development of a first feature by Dénes Nagy, Natural Light, and a feature-length documentary by Gergő Somogyvári, In the Middle of the Danube. Since 2014 Julianna Ugrin is also a fellow Emerging Producer. She says that for her, participating in the programme represented professional feedback that encouraged her to believe that what she was doing was valuable on an international level as well. The main aim of the programme is to strengthen the producer’s work as well as their promotion. The Emerging Producers programme opened new gates for her, which is why she recommends it for every young producer. Julianna is now developing Afterglow, a documentary project by Noémi Veronika Szakonyi. Turn to page 42 to read more about Sára and Julianna!

by Dániel Deák H U N G A R I A N F I L M M AG A Z I N E

New Films from

Hungary Coming soon: various genres and authors; long-awaited first features and comebacks. You can also flip through the latest titles â&#x20AC;&#x201C; from shorts to features and documentaries.

Coming Soon It might be too early to name this period the New Wave of Hungarian films, but thanks to recent success (both festival awards and box office figures) there is a good buzz around Hungarian cinema, which creates high expectations for the upcoming films. From thrillers and sci-fis to arthouse classics, with debut features and continued oeuvres, the following months will be rich in Hungarian films.

Genres – The beginning of a beautiful friendship One of the most well-known hollywood classics, Casablanca, was directed by Hungarian-born Michael Curtiz (Mihály Kertész) and, in the 20th century, there were many other accomplished Hungarian film-makers who made various quality genre films that became big hits in cinemas as well as becoming part of Hungarian film history. Despite this, the past few decades have seen Hungarian cinema being split into arthouse films that have successful festival runs and so-called popular films that are made with mass audiences in mind – with no path between the two genres. The autumn of 2015 could be the beginning of a new era for Hungarian genre fi lms, and hopefully a beautiful one at that. In September Weekend, a long-awaited thriller, will be in cinemas. The fi lm uses a hunting party as a backdrop to talk about overconfidence, deceit and immorality. Its main characters effortlessly take part in the secretive and manipulative ‘games’ of the business world. According to the set photos and trailer, the film will be presented in a stylish way so that it can give a credible glimpse into the controversial world of the Hungarian highend society. “The fi lm is a revenge story that is played out in the wilderness at the end of the world. I was immediately drawn to the subject. I liked that the story showed interesting and complex characters within a genre movie,” says director Áron Mátyássy, who has also worked on award-winning debut feature Last Times as well as successful TV projects, so he must have the experience and talent to realise such a project. The success of the fi lm was also thanks to leading 50

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Hungarian actors in the cast like Tamás Lengyel, Kornél Simon or Dorka Gryllus. Krisztina Goda’s Home Guards, which is addressed to large audiences yet deals with important questions, could be another hit: Home Guards is a dramatic story fi lled with thrilling action scenes that reflect on many of today’s most relevant societal issues. Just as Weekend reflects on the dark side of Hungary’s upper class, Home Guards approaches it from the opposite way, setting its story in an underprivileged area full of angry young men who want to solve social problems in a reckless way. In Home Guards a mysterious yet charismatic leader has a big impact on two boys living in poor circumstances. Inspired to make a change, the boys join a vigilante task force to combat a surging crime rate in their town. However, soon after they join, the boys realise that it’s not so easy deciding who’s guilty and who’s innocent – this is a short summary of the story, which sounds a bit like the Hungarian version of American History X. Krisztina Goda’s feature fi lms (Just Sex and Nothing Else, Children of Glory and Chameleon) had successful admissions and Home Guards might follow suit, even though it carries the heaviest topic of her work. The fi lm will be in cinemas in late October. The diversity of genres in the line-up of Hungarian fi lms will be strengthened by the mind-blowing thriller Loop (Hurok), which is a first feature directed by Madarász Isti whose previous short (Sooner or Later) depicted his interest in special narration and his talent at telling a story with tension in his TV adventure drama The Unbeatables. “Like the unbroken

structure of the Möbius strip, we have to move certain scenes forward without cutting them to create a feeling of continuous movement, while somehow managing to repeatedly take the story back to the same point,” explains Maradász on the structure of the narration of Loop. The protagonist is Adam who is presented with a series of opportunities to correct his previous mistakes; however, a new opportunity does not necessarily mean being given a clean slate. As Adam deals with his determined pursuers and battles on, he is forced to face the complicated repercussions of his past decisions. Reading this, we wouldn’t mind sitting on that Möbius strip ourselves in order to slip into the future watching Loop as soon as possible.

Weekend (Víkend) / Director: Áron Mátyásy Producer: Sándor Csortos Szabó, Ferenc Pusztai Production Company: Budapest Film, KMH Film

Another debut feature film presents another interesting protagonist situated in a strange state of mind but much more to laugh about. My Night, Your Day is about Novák, who cannot sleep. So as not to disturb his girlfriend, he spends his nights in the streets of Budapest and sneaks home in the morning. The fine line between night and day gradually fades away and Novák gets lost in a dream-like Budapest. Directors András György Dési and Gábor Móray have made several successful shorts before and have became very popular among Hungarian film-goers. The short form fit so well to their style that their fans would have thought that Dési and Móray were not willing to create feature-length films at all. Fortunately they had the idea of and got the chance to direct My Night, Your Day. This is a coming-of-age story disguised as a black comedy with hints of a classic thriller, and this mix of genres can result in a film that can keep the audience awake – even at late-night screenings.

Home Guards (Veszettek) / Director: Krisztina Goda Producer: Gábor Kálomista / Production Company: Megaﬁ lm

It seems that instead of the so-called traditional romantic comedies, dark humour will entertain the audiences of Hungarian films in the near future. After My Night, Your Day, another dark comedy entitled Kills on Wheels will arrive into cinemas in early 2016. Besides the comic elements, the film is a sensitive presentation of the story of a young man who is forced to live his life in a wheelchair but ignites his life by joining a wheelchair-bound hitman who works for the mafia. With a dose of dark humour, this dramedy blurs the line between reality and imagination during a boy’s search for friendship, roots and a greater meaning in life.

On Body and Soul (Testről és lélekről) Director: Ildikó Enyedi / Producer: Mónika Mécs, András Muhi, Ernő Mesterházy / Production Company: Inforg–M&M Film

As director Attila Till said, “We were in deep contact with handicapped people throughout the whole process and have learned a lot about their lives. Our

My Night, Your Day (Éjszakám a nappalod) Director: András György-Dési, Gábor Móray / Producer: László Kántor / Production Company: Új Budapest Filmstúdió

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Coming soon aim is to show that wheelchair-bound people have the same enthusiasms, wild desires and ﬂaws as their walking companions.” Kills on Wheels is expected to have a great festival run just as Till’s previous works have (his debut feature Panic was selected for many festivals and his short Beast appeared in the Critics’ Week programme in Cannes).

Loop (Hurok) Director: Madarász Isti / Producer: Tamás Hutlassa / Production Company: Café Film

Lily Lane (Liliom ösvény) Director: Bence Fliegauf / Producer: Ernő Mesterházy, Bence Fliegauf / Production Company: Fraktál Film

Kills on Wheels (Tiszta szívvel) Director: Attila Till / Producer: Judit Stalter / Executive producers: Gábor Rajna, Gábor Sipos / Production Company: Laokoon Film

Th ink of Me (Gondolj rám!) / Director: András Kern / Producer: Dénes Szekeres / Production Company: Tivoli Film

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A favourite at festivals, director Bence Fliegauf, is in post-production with his newest film Lily Lane. The story and the elements of the film suggest that Fliegauf is returning to his universe of magic realism (which can be familiar from his high-budget co-production work Womb, starring Eva Green). Lily Lane presents the relationship between a mother and son: Rebeka and Dani. The two share a life full of grand secrets and magical tales. Rebeka’s mother dies and she is forced to face her past, looking her father up and going back to her childhood home – the place where her mother died. Tale by tale, Rebeka reveals her past to her son. They meet the demons head on – embracing them, riding them and using them to move forward. According to the story and the visual style, Lily Lane is a perfect chance for the director to develop his own creative universe. It will hopefully win several important awards to enrich Fliegauf’s collection, which now contains a Berlinale Silver Bear for Just the Wind and a Golden Leopard from Locarno for Milky Way – among many others. On the one hand, the colourfulness of a fi lm culture is represented by the diversity of genres, and on the other hand it is equally important for anyone to be able to create quality fi lms, regardless of age or sex. The abovementioned fi lms are made by a younger generation of Hungarian directors (many first features have recently been launched too), but in the near future more experienced fi lm-makers are coming back and presenting their fi lms. Péter Gárdos’ long-awaited Fewer at Dawn is coming to cinemas in December. “It’s a fi lm about the Holocaust without the Holocaust itself,” says Gárdos. “The story recounts the love story between my parents, so it’s really close to me on a personal level. Their letters and vivid memories form the foundation of the fi lm.” This Swedish-Hungarian co-production brings the experience of the Holocaust to younger generations through a love story, which – after Son of Saul – is the second history drama dealing with Hungary’s and Europe’s past in a serious way. Gárdos already proved his talent at representing the past with Whooping Cough, presenting the 1956 Hungarian revolution in a complex and sensitive way.

Coming soon

Mom and Other Loonies in the Family (Anyám és más futóbolondok a családból) / Director: Ibolya Fekete / Producer: Gábor Garami Associate producer: Gábor Dettre / Production Company: Cinema-Film

András Kern, a leading Hungarian actor, has a new fi lm, Think of Me, which will arguably be the biggest comeback of the year. Besides being a popular stage and fi lm actor and comedian, Kern has had two successful fi lms as a director in the 90’s: Out of Order and Stracciatella. Think of Me is the bizarre tale of a surgeon whose life seems perfect until he learns that he only has a couple of months left to live. Driven with the best intentions, he decides that the only way to assuage the suffering of others when he dies is to drive everyone away, deliberately cheating on his wife and starting to drink heavily. Think of Me is somewhere between a moral drama and an ironic comedy – but we expect that it could be one of the funniest fi lms of the year. Another long-awaited fi lm will be About Body and Soul by Ildikó Enyedi, a very respected Hungarian film director. Surprisingly, she has not created featurelength fi lms since 1999 when she made Simon, the Magician, even though she has been very active creating short films and TV series (the Hungarian version of In Treatment for HBO) and being one of the most influential teachers of the University of Theatre and Film. About Body and Soul promises to be a special love story about a man and a woman who always have the same dreams. They meet every night in the same universe, and at one point have the chance to meet in the ‘real’

world too. How will they react? With her previous fi lms, Enyedi won (among others) the Camera d’Or in Cannes and a special prize in Locarno, so her new work could have a successful run too. Mum and Other Loonies in the Family sounds like an interesting title, doesn’t it? Director Ibolya Fekete is also from the mid-generation and made her films in the 90’s and early 2000’s (Bolshe Vita, Chico), so it is not an exaggeration to say that 2015 will be the year that revitalises all generations of Hungarian directors. And yes, Mom and Other Loonies in the Family seems to be a credible title for an ambitious yet entertaining fi lm, which also happens to be about generations. “Those who had read the script immediately started telling me stories about their own families, because we’re full of these untold stories. And there are no boring family sagas in East-Central Europe,” says Fekete. Her film will be a zany tale about a family in the 20th century, where the mother lived to be 94 years old and moved 27 times during her life, as moving was her only means of dealing with trouble and danger. In fact, it was History that kept chasing her all over the country and throughout the horrible 20th century. The premiere of the fi lm is planned for October 2015. by Dániel Deák

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Feature Film

Liza, the Fox-Fairy (Liza, a rókatündér) 108 min, Black Comedy, 2014 Director: Károly Ujj Mészáros Cast: Mónika Balsai Producer: István Major Production company: Filmteam Ltd. FESTIVALS: marta.benyei@fi lmunio.hu, kati.vajda@fi lmunio.hu INTERNATIONAL SALES: klaudia.androsovits@fi lmalap.hu Fox-fairies are evil demons from Japanese folklore that rob men of their lives. Liza, a 30-year-old nurse, is in search of love, but each of her ill-fated admirers die on their first date. For the past 12 years, Liza has taken care of Marta, the widow of the former Japanese ambassador. Liza’s only companion is her imaginary friend, Tomy Tani, the ghost of a Japanese pop singer from the 1950s. On her birthday, she goes to a Mekk Burger’s to fi nd romance. Marta dies while Liza is away. Jealous relatives call the police and try to pin the murder on Liza, hoping to inherit Marta’s apartment. Sergeant Zoltan is put on the case. The policeman rents a room from Liza so he can keep a closer eye on his chief suspect. Zoltan secretly repairs a stack of faulty fittings, very nearly getting killed in the process, and soon begins to fall in love with Liza. Liza gains confidence and begins to look better when she takes tips from a women’s magazine, but again all her dating efforts end in fatal accidents, orchestrated by Tomy Tani. Liza is convinced that she has become a fox-fairy, a deadly demon from Japanese folklore. The battle for Liza’s life begins, with the mysterious pop singer and Sergeant Zoltan fighting for Liza’s affection. Th is is a peculiar and poignant comedy set in a fictionalised 1970s’ Hungary with a capitalist system. Liza, the Fox-Fairy is a sarcastic fairy tale for grown-ups. Born in 1968, Károly Ujj Mészáros has made 10 short features over the last nine years. His projects have won 12 prizes in more than 30 national and international short fi lm festivals.Károly has also shot more than 150 commercials over the last 12 years and in 2011 produced a theatre play. He has a university degree in economics. Liza, The Fox-Fairy is his debut feature. Awards: 2015 – Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival Silver Mélies Award 2015 – Brussels BIFFF 7th Orbit Award, Pegasus Audience Award 2015 – Novi Sad Cinema City Cineuropa Prize 2015 – Porto Alegre Fantaspoa, Best Actress: Móni Balsai 2015 – Porto FANTASPORTO, Fantasporto Grand Prix, Best Visual Effects Prize 2015 – Seattle International Film Festival, Grand Jury Prize

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For Some Inexplicable Reason (Van valami furcsa és megmagyarázhatatlan) 96 min, 2014 (graduation fi lm) Director: Gábor Reisz Cast: Áron Ferenczik, Katalin Takács, Zsolt Kovács Producer: Júlia Berkes, Miklós Bosnyák, Viktória Petrányi Production company: Proton Cinema, University of Theatre and Film Arts Budapest SALES, FESTIVALS: info@alphaviolet.com Áron is a 29-year-old weirdo. He suffers from modern complexes, has a fresh university degree and struggles to come to terms with a recent break-up. His parents support him financially while he looks for work, still agonising over his lost love. Áron’s life is always interrupted by something, making it seem like he’s not the main character in his own story. For Some Inexplicable Reason is an unconventional coming-of-age story about the unbearable insignificance of being young and simultaneously provides a detailed glimpse into the city that Áron calls home: Budapest. Gábor Reisz was born on 19 January 1980 in Budapest, Hungary. He started his studies at the Hungarian University of P. E. in 1999 and went on to study Film Theory and Film History at Eötvös Lóránd University in 2003. He won a position at the University of Theatre and Film in Budapest as a fi lm and television director in 2006. He made several short movies in school both as a writer and as a director: The Reason of Denial, Honestly in 2006, 8 (omnibus fi lm) in 2007, Nothing and Good in 2007, Changing Room in 2008, Somebody’s Something in 2009, On a Lower Level in 2011 and Peter (omnibus fi lm) in 2013. For Some Inexplicable Reason is his debut feature fi lm. Awards: 2015 – Espinho FEST: Special Mention 2015 – Khanty-Mansiysk Spirit of Fire: Bronze Taiga Prize 2015 – Sofia International Film Festival: Best Director Award 2015 – Vologoda VOICES: Main Prize 2014 – Torino Film Festival: Special Jury Award, Audience Award, Student Jury Best Screenplay Award, TorinoSette Readers Jury People Choice Award

Feature Film The Wednesday Child (A szerdai gyerek) 94 min, 2015 Director: Lili Horváth Cast: Kinga Vecsei, Zsolt Antal, Szabolcs Thuróczy, Enikő Börcsök, Annamária Németh, Ede Kovács Producer: Károly Fehér Co-producer: Henning Kamm, Fabian Gasmia, Ági Pataki Production company: Popfi lm and Detailfi lm FESTIVALS: marta.benyei@fi lmunio.hu, kati.vajda@fi lmunio.hu INTERNATIONAL SALES: klaudia.androsovits@fi lmalap.hu “You were born on a Wednesday, and Wednesday’s children can make it anywhere they really want to” – these were the last lines Maja had got from her mother before she abandoned her as a child. Maja is now 19. She tries to fulfill this premise and achieve her greatest goal: getting custody of her own 4-year-old son, despite her self-destructive tendencies. Her struggles lead her to an unexpected opportunity and, suddenly, into an erratic love triangle. Born in 1982, Lili Horváth studied fi lm at the Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris in 2001-2002. She then continued with a course in television and fi lm direction at the University of Theatre and Film Arts in Budapest, where she earned her Master’s in 2009 and embarked upon her doctorate. To date, her fi lms include the shorts Summer Holiday (Vakácio, 2006) and Swimming Pool Thief (Uszodai tolvaj, 2007), the documentary The Siege of Budapest – Part

IV (Budapest ostroma, IV. rész, 2007), the medium-length Sunstroke (Napszúrás, 2009) and the TV drama On the Way Home (Hazafelé, 2009). Awards: Best Film in East of the West Karlovy Vary International Film Festival FEDEORA Jury Award Supported by the Hungarian National Film Fund and Filmförderung Hamburg Schleswig-Holstein

Argo 2

Paw (Mancs)

91 min, 2015

92 min, Drama, 2015

Director: Attila Árpa Main cast: Lajos Kovács, Péter Scherer, Lukács Bicskey, József Kiss, Sándor Oszter, Imre Csuja, Feró Nagy Producers: Attila Árpa, Joshi Árpa Production company: Filmhouse FESTIVALS: marta.benyei@fi lmunio.hu, kati.vajda@fi lmunio.hu INTERNATIONAL SALES: klaudia.androsovits@fi lmalap.hu

Director: Róbert Adrián Pejó Cast: Zsolt Trill, Tamás Keresztes, László Szacsvay Producer: László Kántor Coproducer: András Poós Production company: Új Budapest Filmstudio in coproduction with TV2 FESTIVALS: marta.benyei@fi lmunio.hu, kati.vajda@fi lmunio.hu INTERNATIONAL SALES: klaudia.androsovits@fi lmalap.hu

Hungarian small-time crook, Tibi Balog, gets out of prison after 10 years, but he hasn’t changed a bit. When a Japanese crime syndicate hires him to acquire a Hungarian invention – the world’s ﬁrst ﬂoppy disc – Tibi puts his band of dim-witted thugs back together and the action starts. As expected, Tibi completely screws up the job and becomes the target of Japanese assassins, a very angry gypsy family and the entire Slovakian army. Gags, action and no political correctness at all. The Hungarian heat is on.

A sweet, humorous tale about a German shepherd dog that travels around the world and saves lives, rewarded with nothing more than a pat on the head from his loving handler. Mancs is orphaned at birth and suﬀers a long and grueling journey before he eventually ﬁnds sanctuary with a caring family and becomes a canine hero.

Born in 1971 in Munich, Germany, Attila Árpa is a producerdirector-screenwriter and an actor. In 2004 his debut feature Argo quickly became a box oﬃce as well as a cult hit in Hungary. Argo 2, the long-awaited sequel is his second feature. Árpa is currently developing his third movie, Till Death, a thriller with KMH Film and based on his own novel.

Róbert Pejó was born in Romania but grew up in and studied in Austria. He moved to New York in 1996 and, in 2010 returned to Budapest. He works in Europe and the USA.

Supported by the Hungarian National Film Fund

H U N G A R I A N F I L M M AG A Z I N E

Feature Film

Son of Saul (Saul fia)

Zero

107 min, 2015

83 min, 2015

Director: Laszlo Nemes Main cast: Géza Röhrig, Levente Molnár, Urs Rechn,Todd Charmont, Sándor Zsótér Producers: Gábor Sipos, Gábor Rajna Production company: Laokoon Filmgroup INTERNATIONAL SALES, FESTIVALS: info@ﬁ lmsdistribution.com

Director: Gyula Nemes Cast: Krisztián Kovács, Martina Krátká, Udo Kier Producer: Gyula Nemes Co-producer: Iván Angelusz, Jiří Konečný, Eike Goreczka Production company: Absolutfi lm FESTIVALS: marta.benyei@fi lmunio.hu, kati.vajda@fi lmunio.hu INTERNATIONAL SALES: klaudia.androsovits@fi lmalap.hu

October 1944, Auschwitz-Birkenau. Saul Ausländer is a Hungarian member of the Sonderkommando, the group of Jewish prisoners isolated from the camp and forced to assist the Nazis in the machinery of large-scale extermination. While working in one of the crematoriums, Saul discovers the corpse of a boy he takes for his son. As the Sonderkommando plans a rebellion, Saul decides to carry out an impossible task: save the child’s body from the flames, find a rabbi to recite the mourner’s Kaddish and offer the boy a proper burial. Born in Hungary in 1977, Laszlo Nemes spent his adolescence and young adulthood in Paris, having in 1989 followed his mother who started a new life in the French capital. Laszlo Nemes grew up between two countries and two cultures, choosing to first study in Paris before leaving for Budapest, in 2003 at the age of 26, to learn the ropes of filmmaking. He thus became Béla Tarr’s assistant on the Prologue segment of the collaborative fi lm Visions of Europe and on The Man from London. He then directed three short films, notably With a Little Patience, which was chosen for the 2007 Venice International Film Festival. Awards: Cannes Film Festival Official Competition: Grand Prix, FIPRESCI Prize, Francois Chalais Prize, Vulcain Award for Best Sound to Tamás Zányi

Zero is a parable – a provoking and anarchistic caricature of modern consumer society. The manager of a commercial honeybottling plant has his life completely transformed by a bee. After he tastes real honey, he decides to leave the factory and move to the forest where he can work with bees in a meaningful way. It is here that he establishes an environmentalist commune and fights to prevent pollution and save his beloved bees. Born in 1974, Gyula Nemes initially studied Czech and fi lm science. He undertook postgraduate studies at FAMU under Věra Chytilová and Karel Vachek. His feature debut My One and Onlies (Egyetleneim, 2006) was presented as part of Settimana della critica in Venice, and his graduate fi lm Lost World (Letűnt világ, 2008) won Best Short Documentary at Karlovy Vary. The Czech festival also screened The Dike of Transience (A mulandóság gátja, 2004) in the short documentary competition. His experimentation with farce and the grotesque, the singular stylisation of his black-and-white and colour imagery and the absence of traditional dialogue are also characteristic of Zero (2015).

Sarajevo Film Festival: Special Jury Prize Oﬃcial Selection at the Toronto International Film Festival Supported by the Hungarian National Film Fund

Supported by the Hungarian National Film Fund

Free Entry is an independent feature debut that was shot over the course of three years at the biggest music festival in Central Europe: Sziget Festival. The ﬁ lm is an adventurous, summer youth drama revolving around the wild yet precarious relationship between Betty and ‘V’. As the two 16-year-old girls navigate the uncertain road into independence and adulthood, they each begin to realise the importance of their friendship.

Free Entry 70 min, 2014 Director: Yvonne Kerékgyártó Producer: Judit Kastner Cast: Luca Pusztai, Ágnes Barta Production company: DDK Production FESTIVALS: marta.benyei@ﬁ lmunio.hu, kati.vajda@ﬁ lmunio.hu INTERNATIONAL SALES: judit@anormalsessions.com

H U N G A R I A N F I L M M AG A Z I N E

Yvonne Kerékgyártó was born in 1989. She studied dramaturgy and scriptwriting at the University of Theatre and Film Art in Hungary and at the HFF in Potsdam, Germany. She directed the short fi lms Dresscode and Pinkwater, which were selected for the Tokyo Short Shorts IFF in 2012. In 2013 she finished the MFI ‘Scripts 2 Film’ workshop with the feature-length drama script My Six Families. Free Entry is her first feature fi lm. The rough-cut was selected for the Berlinale Editing Studio programme in 2013 where it was developed with Molly Marlene Stensgaard. Awards: 2014 – BEST FILM prize at Cinema City IFF in the Fresh Danube Films category 2015 – SXSW Film Festival, Gamechanger Award

Feature Documentary

Cain’s Children (Káin gyermekei)

Tales of Teleki Square (Teleki téri mesék)

104 min, 2014

87 min, 2015

Director: Marcell Gerő Cast: Pál Pásztor, József Gábor Nagy, Zsolt Barcsai Producer: Sára László (Campﬁ lm, Hungary), Jacques Bidou, Marianne Dumoulin (JBA Production, France) Production company: Campﬁ lm (Hungary), JBA Production (France), ARTE France Co-producer: HBO Europe SALES: info@deckert-distribution.com

Director: Barbara Spitzer Producer: György Durst, Gábor Mayer and Nico Di Biase Production company: Jakab Glaser Memorial Foundation SALES: info@telekiter.com FESTIVALS: marta.benyei@ﬁ lmunio.hu, kati.vajda@ﬁ lmunio.hu

Three boys; they have all committed murder. After discovering their haunting faces and disturbing stories in a banned prison documentary from 1984, the fi lm-maker goes out to find them and discovers untold secrets and a Hungary he had never known. Marcell Gerő studied French and Film Theory and History at ELTE University in Budapest along with Film Direction under János Szász at the Budapest University of Theatre and Film Arts. His diploma fi lm, Kócos (Shock), was presented at numerous international festivals and won several prizes (Potsdam, Milano, Porto and Budapest). He completed his studies in 2007, when he co-founded the Budapest-based production company, “Campfi lm”. After producing a number of documentary and fictional shorts and directing several smaller projects, Cain’s Children is his fi rst feature-length fi lm. Supported by the MEDIA Programme of the European Union, CNC – Centre national de la cinématographie et de l’image animée, Hungarian Tax Incentive, RTS – Radio Télévision Suisse, PROCIREP, ANGOA

The last Jewish praying house – or “Shtiebel” – in Teleki Square in downtown Budapest has miraculously survived the last 100 years. Despite its historical significance for the Hungarian capital’s Jewish community, Teleki Square is not actually in the traditional Jewish Quarter, but in a different district altogether. The newest generation of the Teleki community begins a journey that reveals the hidden story behind their local praying house. The young members of the Teleki Jewish community interview their elders and soon realise that they are the last living members of a once thriving and now lost community. The former market place at Teleki Square was the biggest in Hungary and home to a surprisingly vibrant kosher infrastructure, dozens of praying houses, cafes, schools and numerous restaurants that catered for the daily needs of the tens of thousands of Jews living around the market. The ageing interviewees look fondly back on the once flourishing and colourful community in Budapest’s 8th district, which accommodated the second biggest Jewish population in the city. At that time, Jewish culture was so prevalent in Teleki Square that the expression “Teleki Square Jew” was a well-known and often-used expression among members of the Jewish community in the capital. French documentary film-maker Barbara Spitzer got in touch with the Teleki Tér Synagogue – the last Shtiebel in Budapest – while doing fieldwork research on her family’s roots in Hungary. She was so captivated by the history and culture of the Shtiebel that she has followed the life of the community with her camera for over a decade.

Even 70 years on, it is vital that the memory of the Holocaust and of Raoul Wallenberg be kept alive. Th is ﬁ lm sets out to draw a coherent picture of Raoul Wallenberg in the years preceding the war, not too long before his acts of outstanding heroism.

The Lost European (Az elveszett európai) 61 min, 2015 Director: József Sipos Producer: Krisztina Détár Production company: Filmnet SALES: pcnfi lm@pcnfi lm.hu FESTIVALS: marta.benyei@fi lmunio.hu, kati.vajda@fi lmunio.hu

The Lost European begins with the introduction of a child growing up in a prestigious Swedish family. After becoming an orphan, and then a young man, the protagonist unexpectedly fi nds himself working with a Hungarian Jew. His fate goes on to become triumphantly and tragically entangled with the fate of Eastern European Jewry. József Sipos is a feature-fi lm director and producer. His work is enriched by the fact that he blends human values with artistic vision. His mission, as he claims, is simply to make good fi lms and present them to audiences. His most recent feature-length fi lms were Eszter’s Inheritance (2008) and The Adventure (2011). He also developed several television features, including Mindszenty (2010) and The Secret Number (2010).

H U N G A R I A N F I L M M AG A Z I N E

Feature Documentary Ricsi, a young rebel, lives his life on the edge. He’s always getting into trouble, whether it’s driving cars without a license, stealing or running from the cops. Ricsi despises what others would call a normal life. His problematic behaviour exasperates his parents and he never lives up to the expectations of his deadbeat father. But why would Ricsi care? After all, Ricsi’s father was never around when he needed him the most. Drifter was shot over a period of 5 years and is a portrait of a young man who lives by his own rules.

Drifter 72 min, 2014 Director: Gábor Hörcher Main character: Richárd Steinbach Producer: Marcell Iványi, Gábor Hörcher, Marieke Bittner Production company: Kraats Film, Weydemann Bros. Contact: marcell@kraatsﬁ lm.com

Awards: Winner of the IDFA Award for the Best First Appearance Documentary, 2014 Winner of the Robert Bosch Co-Production Prize, 2011

Balaton Method

Tititá (A zene felemel)

85 min, 2015

90 min, 2015

Director: Bálint Szimler Starring: Hungarian musicians Producer: Gábor Osváth, Gábor Kovács, Árpád Szirmai Production company: Boddah, Filmpartners, VisionTeam FESTIVALS, SALES: gabor@boddah.hu

Director: Tamás Almási Main cast: Antal Kuru, Ferenc Snétberger Producer: Tamàs Almàsi and Julianna Ugrin Production company: Filmdimenzió Kft. and A Zene Felemel Kft. Contact: julianna.ugrin@eclipseﬁ lm.hu

Director Bálint Szimler and cinematographer Marcell Rév (White God) previously worked together on the Kodály Method. Th is project consisted of a collection of special music videos that featured music recorded live, and all videos were shot in one continuous take. Balaton Method is the continuation and conclusion of their earlier project. Seventeen Hungarian bands and hundreds of musicians collaborated with Szimler and Rév to make a special music documentary with the iconic Lake Balaton serving as its background. Th is is the first movie in Hungary to be partially financed by crowdfunding; the fi lm-makers managed to gather EUR 10 000 on Indiegogo.com in 2014. The fi lm debuted to rave reviews in Hungary and is currently ‘touring’ the country throughout the summer with the support of the Hungarian National Film Fund.

Anti is a 17-year-old Roma boy who lives in a slum deep in the Hungarian countryside. Anti’s passion is playing the guitar, which earns him and 60 other Roma youth the opportunity to attend the Snétberger Music Talent Centre. A path to a better life unfolds right in front of Anti’s eyes. Does he have the ability to change what feels like a predestined life and make the most of a golden opportunity? The ﬁ lm is a full-length documentary about struggle and hope, and also introduces the excellent work of the Snétberger Music Talent Centre.

Bálint Szimler was born in 1987. He enrolled in the University of Theatre and Film Arts in Budapest in 2007. His third-year project, Here I Am, was selected as the Best Short Film during Hungarian Film Week. It was also selected for Cannes Cinefondation and was later nominated at the European Film Awards. Along with DOP Marcell Rév, Bálint is the author behind the Kodály Method videos and the Balaton Method film. He is currently writing his first feature fiction.

Gábor Hörcher was born in 1980 in Budapest, Hungary, where he earned degrees in Psychology, Law and Film Studies. Gábor has worked as a waiter in London and as a mixer and bartender in Greece. He has also lived in the United States, France and Cambodia, where he taught courses on human rights at a local university. He started working with the director and producer Marcell Iványi in early 2008. Together they run Kraats Film, producing both ﬁ lms and theatre performances.

H U N G A R I A N F I L M M AG A Z I N E

Tamás Almási is one of the most well-known and most successful Hungarian documentary fi lm directors. He graduated from the University of Theatre and Film Arts in Budapest as a fi lm director in 1979. He directs, but also occasionally photographs, his own fi lms. So far he has made more than 40 full-length documentaries and several feature fi lms, many of which have been screened at highly prestigious festivals in Europe and overseas and have won numerous awards. Awards: 2015 – Sarajevo Film Festival: Special Jury Prize Supported by the Creative Europe – MEDIA programme and the Hungarian National Film Fund

Short Documentary

In the Language of Cowbells – Straw Coffin (Kolompok nyelvén – Gyékénykoporsó) 26 min, 2015 Director: Dezső Zsigmond Producer: Miklós Szederkényi Production company: Dunatáj Foundation FESTIVALS, SALES: dunataj@gmail.com The fields of eastern Hungary were once grazed by large herds of cows. As these large herds disappeared from small villages, the chime of cowbells slowly turned into the ring of funeral bells. Bálint Balla, one of the last remaining local cow farmers, bids a final farewell to his herd and proceeds to build a coffi n for himself out of rushes and willow branches. Th is short documentary uses a rich array of images, music and sound to depict a world that has now completely vanished from view. Dezső Zsigmond was born in 1956 and currently lives in Budapest. He has been a member of the Hungarian Academy of Arts since 2006. He directed several feature and documentary fi lms that often dealt with rural life in Hungary and Hungarian minorities in neighbouring countries. He made several fi lms in Transylvania (mostly in the Ghymes region) and the Szatmár region of eastern Hungary. His fi lms are renowned for a type of magic realism that merges fiction and reality.

2nd Floor (2. em) 20 min, 2014 Director: Hajni Kis Producer: Miklós Bosnyák Production company: University of Theatre and Film Arts SALES: dunataj@gmail.com FESTIVALS: marta.benyei@fi lmunio.hu, kati.vajda@fi lmunio.hu An intimate look into the life of a home for the elderly and the story of a male nurse who tries his best to cheer the tenants up. Produced by the University of Theatre and Film Arts of Budapest, this short documentary is about dignity of life and the last days on Earth – and about those who will stay here after us. Born in 1990, Hajni Kis fi rst studied acting and fi lm theory, but ended up in the directing class of the University of Theatre and Film Arts of Budapest in 2013. 2nd Floor is her second-semester project of her first year at the University, and her very first documentary. Festivals: Official selection at the Budapest International Documentary Festival Brussels Short Film Festival – Next Generation Festival selection Monterrey International Film Festival Supported by the Hungarian National Film Fund

TV Drama Bureau follows everyday events inside a fictional immigration office. There we meet Anna, a new member of the staff. As we follow Anna’s daily routine, we find ourselves faced with sometimes humorous, sometimes thought-provoking, and often touching stories and we begin to understand the pressure that this office has on those behind the desks.

Bureau (Hivatal)

Viktor Oszkár Nagy graduated as a fi lm director from the University of Theatre and Film Arts in Budapest in 2007. After making several documentary fi lms that dealt with issues related to immigration and refugees (3 Weddings, Caught Between Two Worlds, Superior Orders), Bureau is Viktor’s first fiction fi lm.

52 min, 2015 Director: Viktor Oszkár Nagy Main cast: Anna Fignár, Batka Zoltán, Kaya Turan, Kaya Elif, Kaya Asiye, Kaya Asmin Producers: Sára László, Marcell Gerő Production company: Campfi lm FESTIVALS, SALES: office@campfi lm.eu

This project is supported by the European Union’s European Integration Fund.

H U N G A R I A N F I L M M AG A Z I N E

TV Drama In January 1914, a horriﬁc murder shocked the city of Budapest. Elza Mágnás, one of the most famous courtesans in the city, was strangled and her body was thrown into the icy waters of the Danube. Demimonde chronicles the last four days of Elza’s life through the eyes of a naive maid, detailing Elza’s complex relationships with her housekeeper, her sponsor and her young lover. Th is ﬁ lm is based on a true story about love, sex, power, passion and murder.

Demimonde (Félvilág) 88 min, 2015 Director: Attila Szász Main cast: Patrícia Kovács, Dorka Gryllus, Laura Döbrösi Producer: Tamás Lajos, Tamás Mink Production company: Szupermodern Stúdió Kft. FESTIVALS, SALES: info@szupermodern.hu

Hungarian writer-director Attila Szász graduated at the University of Theatre and Film Arts in Budapest in 1996. He worked as a fi lm critic for several years and started directing from 2002. His fi rst short fi lm, Now You See Me, Now You Don’t, won 18 awards in festivals. His first feature-length movie, The Ambassador To Bern, was released in 2014. Th is political thriller was invited to screen at over 30 fi lm festivals and won 9 awards.

Supported by the Media Council Film and the Media Funding Scheme

Th is miniseries is based on Gábor Vaszary’s novel which was published in 1938. It’s about the adventures of two Hungarian boys, Laci and Pali, in Paris in the 1930s. Naturally, there are pretty French girls who the boys become smitten with. Laci and Pali have several problems stemming from a lack of money, the Hungarian immigrants they meet and their Aunt Bertie who is sent after them by their parents.

3x50 min, miniseries 2015

Since being awarded his degree at the University of Theatre and Film Arts of Budapest in 1996, Gábor has concentrated on documentary ﬁ lmmaking. Some of his work – The Life of an Agent (2004), Spy in a One Horse Town (2009) and My Soviet Pen Pal (2011) – took part in festivals around the world, from Amsterdam to Mar del Plata.

Director: Gábor Zsigmond Papp Main cast: Péter Sándor, Zsombor Barna, Ildikó Pécsi, etc. Producer: Gábor Zsigmond Papp Production company: Bologna Film FESTIVALS, SALES: pappgzs@gmail.com

Supported by the Media Council Film and the Media Funding Scheme

Two Against Paris (Ketten Párizs ellen)

Plock, a respected specialist when it comes to writing cheap fiction, is in big trouble: in order to settle his substantial debts, he has to start and fi nish a brand-new story by six in the evening otherwise he can wave goodbye to his precious fame and pretty fi ancée. But fortune favours him when his friends, all of whom suffer from sketchy success as authors, club together and get writing. Before he knows it, guns are fi ring, the breeze is heavy with desert sand and a barroom brawl begins.

61 min, 2015

Madarász Isti was born in 1976 in Miskolc. His official directorial debut was in February of 2007 during the Hungarian Film Week where he premiered his time-travelling short fi lm Előbb-Utóbb (Sooner or Later). The fi lm was a favourite and won several awards and was selected to more than 20 festivals around the world. Isti is currently working on his debut feature fi lm, a Mobius strip-like thriller called Loop, which will be in theatres at the end of 2015.

Director: Madarász Isti Cast: Zoltán Schmied, Csilla Radnay, Péter Haumann, Tibor Szervét Producer: Tamás Lajos, Tamás Mink Production company: Film Positive Kft. FESTIVALS, SALES: andrea.forgon@ﬁ lmpositive.hu

Supported by the Media Council Film and the Media Funding Scheme

The Curse of the Black Mummy (A fekete múmia átka)

H U N G A R I A N F I L M M AG A Z I N E

TV Documentary

My Mother’s Letters to Comrade Stalin (Anyám levelei Sztálin elvtársnak) 53 min, 2015 Director: Márta Mészáros Main cast: Márta Mészáros, Pamirbek Kazybajev, Róza Ajtmatova Producer: Attila Csáky Production company: Cameofi lm Stúdió SALES: info@cameofi lm.hu FESTIVALS: marta.benyei@fi lmunio.hu, kati.vajda@fi lmunio.hu

Vilma Kovács, who followed her husband to faraway Kyrgyzstan, where she was left all alone with her children when her husband was arrested. Her surviving letters are not just historical documents about a horrific regime, but they are also a testimony to the struggle of a courageous woman and her lifelong devotion to her spouse. We get a firsthand glimpse into the apathy of Soviet authorities (who did little to help Vilma) and witness just how worthless an individual’s life was in the Soviet Union during the 1930s. Stalinist terror destroyed Vilma twice: first while she struggled in vain to find her husband, and then again when she died during the Second World War, after which all memory of her life was erased. Returning to the scene where the events took place, Márta fails to find any trace of her mother. In fact, the eerie absence of her mother’s existence is what creates the dramatic tension in this documentary. But Márta manages to track down one witness: the sister of the world-famous Kyrgyz writer Chingiz Aitmatov. It is soon revealed that the two women shared an astoundingly similar fate. Despite the horrors of history, this fi lm is about love and devotion. It also beautifully portrays a mysterious, colourful and now independent Kyrgyzstan.

Márta Mészáros has portrayed the fate of her father, László Mészáros – a sculptor executed during the Stalinist purges –, in several of her ﬁlms. This time she tracks the fate of her mother,

The internationally acclaimed Cannes, Berlin and Venice awardwinning Hungarian ﬁ lm director Márta Mészáros was born in 1931. She started her career working in documentary ﬁ lm. She won the Golden Bear for Adoption in 1975 and received the Grand Prix in Cannes in 1984 for Diary for my Children.

City of Terror (Budapest ostroma)

Harm (Seb)

2x45 min, 2015

52 min, 2015

Director: Tamás Babos Producer: Attila Nóti-Nagy, Erika Kissimon Production company: Central European Media Group Kft. FESTIVALS, SALES: notinagy@gmail.com

Director: Dénes Nagy Producers: Sára László, Marcell Gerő (Campfi lm), Anna Závorszky (HBO Europe) Executive producer: Hanka Kastelicová (HBO Europe) Production company: Campfi lm FESTIVALS, SALES: office@campfi lm.eu

City of Terror is the story of one of the longest sieges of World War II. In Budapest, the 100 000 German and Hungarian troops held up a force twice as strong, comprising two Soviet fronts, for 108 days between October 1944 and February 1945. During half of this time, the defenders fought completely encircled by the mighty Red Army. Budapest was so important for Adolf Hitler both politically and strategically that he sent the last reserves of his elite SS panzer divisions to relieve Budapest when the Soviet tanks were just 60 kilometers from the capital of the Th ird Reich. Tamás Babos is a prolific fi lm-maker on the Hungarian market. Widely known as the sensitive cinematographer of six movies and dozens of TV fi lms and documentaries, Tamás set out on the journey of directing in 2012 with his short fi lm Fehér Nyíl (White Arrow), at the same time working as a producer of a number of TV fi lms for the Hungarian public service media. During his career, he has won numerous prizes for cinematography and his fi lms have also been rewarded.

Harm means deliberate self-injuring in our poetic documentary, which follows three brave and emotionally capturing characters who are ready to unfold their unsettled past with the risk of discovering something painful along the way. Dénes Nagy graduated from the University of Theatre and Film Arts in Budapest in János Szász’s class in 2009. He has made several short fi lms, both documentary and fiction, that have been shown at various significant national and international festivals. His latest documentary, Harm (Seb), which is made as an original production of HBO Europe, is presented in the documentary competition of the 21th Sarajevo Film Festival.

Supported by the Media Council Film and the Media Funding Scheme

H U N G A R I A N F I L M M AG A Z I N E

TV Documentary hundreds of thousands of Hungarian women were raped during this period. The severity of the situation is also highlighted by the fact that abortion was made legal shortly after the Soviet occupation. Th is is a ﬁ lm about the sins of the past – about victims and war criminals, forgiveness and forgetting.

Silenced Shame (Elhallgatott gyalázat) 52 min, Documentary, 2014 Director: Fruzsina Skrabski Producer: Zoltán Janovics Production company: Omega-Kreatív LP FESTIVALS, SALES: skrabski.fruzsina@gmail.com

Awards: 2014 Trieste A Film for Peace Festival: Special Mention Kamera Korrektúra Hungarian TV Film Festival: 1st place in Category

Rape is entrenched in the culture of war, with perhaps no better example than the Soviet occupation of Hungary in 1945. Extensive research into records from STD clinics shows that

Supported by the Media Council Film and the Media Funding Scheme

Budapest Bar (Budapest Bár)

Song Brothers (Engedem, hadd menjen!)

52 min, 2015

77 min, 2015

Director: Tamás Tóth Starring: Hungarian musicians Producer: Attila Csáky Production company: Sanzonﬁ lm Kft. FESTIVALS, SALES: info@cameoﬁ lm.hu

Director: Balázs Lévai Starring: Hungarian musicians, members of Csík Band and Quimby Producer: Julianna Ugrin Co-producer: Balázs Lévai Production company: Éclipse Film FESTIVALS, SALES: julianna.ugrin@eclipseﬁ lm.hu

Budapest Bar is a music documentary about the band that goes by the same name, Budapest Bar. The fi lm treats three different subjects: gypsy music, the chanson of Budapest and underground music; it is also an educational fi lm about music and being a musician. In the fi lm, thousands of young people dance to this music while the musicians and singers of Budapest Bar talk about the roots of gypsy music and the ambiance of old café houses. Tamás Tóth is a screenwriter, fi lm director and figural artist who was born in 1966. He is a member of the first European Child Animation Film Studio in Budapest. He graduated from the Moscow Federal Film Academy (VGIK) with a degree in fi lm directing. His debut fi lm as a fi lm director is a Hungarian-Russian co-production entitled Children of Iron God. He directed a number of feature fi lms, documentaries, short fi lms and commercials both in Russia and in Hungary, as well as documentary-fiction fi lms in India. He also creates graphic series, oil paintings and book illustrations. Supported by the Media Council Film and the Media Funding Scheme

Fruzsina Skrabski was born in 1975. She got her PhD from the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Pécs. Her research was about cross-cultural communication. She began her career working for Hungarian newspapers as an employee of internal and foreign affairs. Her first fi lm with Tamás Novák, titled Crime Unpunished, was about Béla Biszku, the communist Minister of Interior Affairs after the 1956 revolution. In 2011, she shared directing duties with Tamás Novák at “Heti válasz” (a Hungarian political magazine). In 2012 she co-directed a TV documentary series, again with Tamás Novák, entitled Ring and Run Away.

H U N G A R I A N F I L M M AG A Z I N E

A folk musician recovering from an almost-lethal car accident covers the song of a pop icon who just has returned from rehab by working an unknown small Romanian folk band’s motif into it, which leads to the biggest hit in the past decade in Hungary. Quimby is an alternative rock band that has been popular on the Hungarian music scene since 1991. In 2003 they had to take a break when Tibor Kiss, their singer and songwriter, went to rehab for over a year. Years later a folk band, the Hungarian Csík Band, decided to cover it and with that the song became more popular than anyone would have thought. Balázs Lévai was born in 1968. After several years of working in television as a reporter and editor, he directed music videos and music documentaries. He has also worked as an art director in music projects and has written several books about well-known Hungarian bands. Supported by the Media Council Film and the Media Funding Scheme

Educational Documentary the shadows. In the ballast of ships, in the cargo of planes and in transportation containers of every variety, invasive stowaways make their way to distant lands. When they ﬁnally escape into their foreign habitat, they are left to their own devices – adapting to a new environment, a new climate, confronting new rivals and new challenges. But why does this matter to people?

Silent Invaders (Csendes gyarmatosítók) 26 min, Documentary, 2013 Director: Szabolcs Mosonyi Narrator: Ákos Kőszegi Producer: Erika Bagladi Production company: Nat Film FESTIVALS, SALES: natﬁ lm@mailbox.hu The migration of species is not a new phenomenon. However, it appears that the scale of migratory distances has expanded as a result of the ever-increasing necessity of international trade. At ports, airports and railway stations alike, something lurks in

The Timehopper (Az időgyűrű ura) 3x28 min, 2015

Mr. Szabolcs Mosonyi is a director and cinematographer. He was born in Budapest in 1970 and went on to receive his university degree as a teacher of biology and geography in 1994. His interest in nature and knowledge-sharing was evident during his time as an amateur nature photographer and later as a producer of nature fi lms. He and his wife, Erika Bagladi, started to concentrate more seriously on documentary fi lmmaking in 2000. Szabolcs Mosonyi’s work is shown on a number of foreign and domestic TV channels and movie theatres, and many of his projects have gone on to win dozens of awards at festivals around the world. Awards: Csodakút 2013: Main Prize Agrofi lm 2013: Second Prize Bar 013: Special Prize Supported by the Media Council Film and the Media Funding Scheme

Nature Documentary – A Hungarian Invention? (A természetfilm magyar találmány?) 52min, 2014

Director: Zsolt Marcell Tóth Producer: Zsolt Marcell Tóth, Attila Dávid Molnár Production company: T.ZS.M. Produkció and Természetfi lm.hu FESTIVALS, SALES: tzsm@termeszetfi lm.hu The Timehopper is a wildlife fi lm about the changes experienced by the habitat and fauna in the Carpathian Basin during and after the Ice Age, which spans some 20 000 years. Livius Varga, a professional musician, amateur naturalist and fanatic tablet user, is not an introverted man by any means. To activate his brand-new TIME-HOP application that he loaded onto his tablet, Livius must leave civilisation behind and withdraw himself into nature. He creates temporary “time capsule” homes under the rocky peaks of the Carpathian Mountains (Part 1: HOLDING ON), among the reeds of one of the biggest lakes in the Carpathian Basin (Part 2: IN BACKWASH) and under the canopy of a giant oak tree that is several hundred years old (Part 3: IN THE WOODS).

Director: János Lerner Producer: Zsolt Marcell Tóth, Attila Dávid Molnár Production Company: Természetfi lm.hu FESTIVALS, SALES: tzsm@termeszetfi lm.hu With the help of some Hungarian nature documentary fi lmmakers, we are looking for answers to certain questions, like how are the past and present of Hungarian wildlife fi lms merged, or do the well-known originality, wit and ingenuity that Hungarian fi lm-makers were always characterised by still exist? János Lerner started his career as a university lecturer in geography and cartography. After gaining several years of experience in expedition organisation, tour operation, national park management, travel writing and travel photography, he started to work for Spektrum Television in 1998 as an editor. In 2008 he joined the wildlife documentary team of Természet fi lm. hu/Filmjungle.eu.

Zsolt Marcell Tóth started his career as a contributor for the Hungarian National Public Service Television. In 1998 he founded his own production company and started producing content for television. His most recent creation is Természetﬁ lm/Filmjungle, which produces educational TV documentaries about nature. Supported by the Media Council Film and the Media Funding Scheme

Supported by the Media Council Film and the Media Funding Scheme

H U N G A R I A N F I L M M AG A Z I N E

Educational Documentary Th is miniseries portrays the lifestyle of captains of cargo ships on the Danube. It also depicts the river throughout the seasons, from its source to the delta. The mighty river – some 2 580-kilometres long – is one of the longest commercial routes in Europe, but not many people know about the nomadic lifestyle of these captains.

2x52 min, Documentary, 2014

Gergő Somogyvári (born in 1978) studied cinematography at the University of Theatre and Film Arts of Budapest after ﬁnishing his studies in journalism and photography. In collaboration with the producer György Durst, Gergő directed four documentaries and took part in various documentary ﬁ lms as acinematographer. Tile Mail, a documentary made in cooperation with Judit Feszt, earned him the Best Documentary Director and Cinematographer Award at the Hungarian Film Week in 2009.

Director: Gergő Somogyvári Producer: Ágnes Pataki Production company: Partnersﬁ lm Kft. FESTIVALS, SALES: gergo.somogyvari@gmail.com

Supported by the Media Council Film and the Media Funding Scheme

Trans Danube 1–2. (Trans Duna 1–2.)

Short Film

Station (Á(l)lomás)

White Wolf (Fehér farkas)

13 min, 2015

19 min, 2015

Director: Csaba Vékes Cast: Gabriella Hámori, Kati Lázár, Gábor Máté Producer: Csaba Vékes Production company: Blue Duck Arts Bt. FESTIVALS: kati.vajda@ﬁ lmunio.hu SALES: vekes.csaba@blueduck.hu

Director: Fanni Szilágyi Cast: Franciska Farkas, Gusztáv Molnár Producer: Miklós Bosnyák, Gábor Kovács Production company: University of Theatre and Film Arts, Filmpartners Sales, festivals: adam.felszeghy@gmail.com

Th is ﬁ lm tells the story of a journey. After having completed all of her tasks on this planet, the old Aunt Terry would like to go somewhere, somewhere else... However, it is impossible to do so without the appropriate documents, but the place where Aunt Terry would be heading does not require any speciﬁc papers. The story balances between reality and imagination with a thin borderline in between, making us uncertain whether we should cry of laughter or of sadness.

Niki visits the white wolf, the lone prisoner of the city zoo, every single day. She would do anything to get into the cage with the dangerous animal. The young gypsy girl keeps having to face the strict regulations set by the strong male community of the zoo. Through her sexual exploitation we learn of the young outsider’s suppressed position in a wild and male-dominated world. The story, however, ends with a magical twist.

Csaba Vékes graduated as an actor in 2006 from the University of Kaposvár. After working as an actor at the Csiky Gergely Theatre in Kaposvár, I moved to Budapest and started to act and stage direct in Stúdió K Theatre, KOMA Theatre and Thália Theatre. In 2009 I founded the Blue Duck Arts screenwriter company. I won the István Örkény drama writer scholarship in 2013. The Station is my ﬁrst short movie that I have made at a professional level. Supported by the Media Council Film and the Media Funding Scheme

H U N G A R I A N F I L M M AG A Z I N E

Born in 1986, Fanni Szilágyi graduated as a photographer from the University of Kaposvár. She began at the University of Theatre and Film Arts in Budapest as a cinematographer and is now preparing her graduation ﬁ lm, which is also an adaptation of a story by the young contemporary author, Réka Mán Várhegyi. Fanni has directed several shorts, ﬁ lmed numerous video clips and has also had a range of exhibitions as a photographer.

Supported by the Hungarian National Film Fund

Short Film

The Sound of Concrete (Betonza j)

Switch (Átváltozás)

30 min, 2014

19 min, 2015

Director: István Kovács Cast: Dóra Sztarenki, Tünde Szalontay, László Mátray Producer: Miklós Bosnyák, Gábor Osváth Production company: University of Theatre and Film Arts, Filmfabriq Sales, festivals: info@ﬁ lmfabriq.hu

Director: Zoltán Nagy Cast: Áron Vén, Boldizsár Vén, Zsóﬁa Szamosi, Tibor Gáspár Producer: Miklós Bosnyák, Gábor Kovács Production company: University of Theatre and Film Arts, Filmpartners Sales, festivals: info@ﬁ lmfabriq.hu

Dia is a young female kickboxer who lives in the suburbs of Budapest with her mother and younger brother. Her dream is to compete in Germany where she could earn good money. All she has to do is win her upcoming championship.

Béla and Pisti are 10-year-old knife-thrower twins in a touring circus. Their father loves only one of them. When the favourite son, Pisti, dies in an accident, their mother has an idea.

Born in 1985 in a Hungarian minority of former Yugoslavia, István Kovács spent most of his youth in the southern Hungarian town of Szeged. He enrolled in the University of Theatre and Film Arts in Budapest in 2011, where he recently got his BA in Directing in the class taught by János Szász and Attila Janisch.

Born in 1988, Zoltán Nagy received his BA at the Sapientia University Department of Film in Romania. In 2013, he was accepted to the University of Theatre and Film Arts in Budapest, where he will receive his MA diploma in ﬁ lm direction in 2015. Switch is his latest school project; he is currently producing his graduation movie.

Supported by the Hungarian National Film Fund

Border (Határ)

End of Puberty (Kamaszkor vége)

24 min, 2015

13 min, 2015

Director: Mátyás Szabó Cast : Márton Patkós, Imre Csuja, Franciska Farkas Producer: Miklós Bosnyák, István Major Production company: University of Theatre and Film Arts and Filmteam Sales: klaudia.androsovits@fi lmalap.hu Festivals: marta.benyei@fi lmunio.hu, kati.vajda@fi lmunio.hu

Director: Fanni Szilágyi Cast: Liza Kárpáti, Zita Szenteczki, Renátó Olasz Producer: Miklós Bosnyák Production company: University of Theatre and Film Arts SALES: klaudia.androsovits@ﬁ lmalap.hu FESTIVALS: danieldeak@daazo.com

A prisoner by the name of Maydan has the chance to escape from his guard. However, still chained to a handcar, he is forced to follow the rails. He has no way of knowing who is friend and who is enemy, or whether the girl he meets will help him to evade the law.

On a beautiful summer day, two teenage twins meet a boy who introduces them to sexuality and jealousy, as well as a real anger that ends up driving them apart. This moment marks the end of puberty.

Mátyás Szabó was born in 1987 in Budapest, Hungary. After high school he studied Slavic culture and aesthetics at the Pázmány Péter University. In 2011 he started studying as a ﬁ lm director at the University of Theatre and Film Arts in Budapest. Border is his BA graduation ﬁ lm; it was selected in the Future Frames programme of Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.

Born in 1986, Fanni Szilágyi graduated as a photographer from the University of Kaposvár. She began at the University of Theatre and Film Arts in Budapest as a cinematographer and is now preparing her graduation ﬁ lm, which is also an adaptation of a story by the young contemporary author, Réka Mán-Várhegyi. Fanni has directed several shorts, ﬁ lmed numerous video clips and has also had a range of exhibitions as a photographer.

Supported by the Hungarian National Film Fund

H U N G A R I A N F I L M M AG A Z I N E

Short Film

Richie (Ricsi)

The Seventies (Hetvenes)

15 min, Short Film 2014

29 min, Short Film 2014

Director: Gábor Hörcher Cast: Richárd Steinbach, Brigitta Kovács, Péter Fonyadt Producer: László Hartai, Gábor Rajna, Gábor Sipos Production company: ELTE Sales, festivals: info@kraatsﬁ lm.com

Director: Linda Dombrovszky Cast: Kálmán Németh, Al Ghaoui Hesna, Konrád Quintus, Zoltán Megyeri Producer: István Koller Production company: KKTV Media Sales: dombrovszky@gmail.com Festivals: marta.benyei@ﬁ lmunio.hu, kati.vajda@ﬁ lmunio.hu

Richie’s friends have organised a farewell party the night before he needs to go away. Meanwhile, his mother is busy packing for the trip instead of him. Gábor Hörcher was born in 1980 in Budapest, Hungary. He attended the University of Psychology and Law as well as the University of Film Studies and has worked as a waiter in London and as a mixer and bartender in Greece. He has lived in the United States, France, and Cambodia, where he taught courses on human rights at a local university. He started working with the director and producer Marcell Iványi in early 2008. They run KraatsFilm together, where they produce both ﬁ lms and theatre performances.

Linda Dombrovszky graduated as a fi lm and television director at the University of Theatre and Film Arts in Budapest. She studied on a scholarship at Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografi a in Rome. A director of several award-winning short fi lms and documentaries, she is currently working on her first feature script based on the story of Seventies.

Supported by the Hungarian National Film Fund

Supported by the Media Council Film and the Media Funding Scheme

The Leaving (Az Elmenetel)

Romanian Sunrise

12 min, 2015

24 min, 2015

Director: Barnabás Tóth Producer: Barnabás Tóth Production company: TADAM Film FESTIVALS, SALES: barnabastoth.com

Director: Ábel Visky Cast: Gusztáv Molnár, Ion Sapdaru Producer: Juli Berkes, Eszter Gyárfás, Miklós Bosnyák Production company: University of Theatre and Film Arts, Proton Cinema, Filmteam Sales, festivals: berkesjuli@protoncinema.hu

The last 10 minutes of humanity. A young girl is waiting for an operation in a hospital. A Christmas story. Since graduating from the Budapest Film School in 2003, Barnabás Tóth has been an independent writer, director and producer. His ﬁ lmography includes shorts (On a train, My Guide, amongst others), animation (Grimm Café), feature (Camembert Rose) and now a short documentary ﬁ lm (Hors Pairs).

Supported by Laokoon Filmgroup

At an unknown time in the near future, a Central-Eastern European country that fears overpopulation as a result of an ageing population passes a gruesome law that requires that everyone who is approaching the age of 70 be put to sleep in a humane fashion.

H U N G A R I A N F I L M M AG A Z I N E

Dániel, a 30-year-old Hungarian boy, is searching for his father on the Romanian seashore. Although he hasn’t seen him since his early childhood, he has a very special request for him. Ábel Visky was born in Romania in 1987. Since September 2011 he has been studying ﬁ lm directing at the University of Theatre and Film Arts in Budapest. During his studies, Abel made several festival-winning short movies, including Zsolt and Kriszta, Dummy and Playfellows. Romanian Sunrise is his graduation ﬁ lm. Supported by the Hungarian National Film Fund

Short Film

Boglarka (Boglárka)

Letter to God (Levél Istenhez)

13 min, 2015

30 min, Short Film 2014

Director: Ákos Badits Cast: László Fehér, Nóra Rainer-Micsinyei, Nóra Trokán Producer: Miklós Bosnyák, Gábor Osváth Production company: University of Theatre and Film Arts, Filmfabriq Sales, festivals: info@ﬁ lmfabriq.hu

Director: Tamás Yvan Topolánszky Cast: Krisztián Kovács, Lídia Danis, József Tóth, János Kulka Producer: Claudia Sümeghy Production company: HALLUCI-NATION Sales, festivals: info@halluci-nation.com

Istók, an unlikely hero, sets oﬀ to save the beautiful Boglárka from the dragon who has kidnapped her. Along the way he is joined by a companion he never wanted: Hilda, who is madly in love with Istók’s heroic brother.

Ali is a young farmer who lives in abject poverty with his wife and children on a farm far from the village. The driest summer of his life endangers everything he has built for his family. With his childlike prayers he prays to God everyday. As Ali’s bitterness grows, he asks for rain like the world has never seen. Ali gets his wish, but God works in mysterious ways…

Born in 1988, Hungarian fi lm-maker Ákos Badits enrolled to the University of Theatre and Film Arts (SZFE) in Budapest in 2011. His second-year fi lm at SZFE, Sweet Home, is a comic tale of latent rivalry between siblings. His third-year graduation fi lm, Boglárka, is a homage to the fantasy movies of the 1980s. Ákos is also a self-trained VFX expert – he did all of the visual effects for his movies and for the feature For Some Inexplicable Reason, which debuted in Karlovy Vary 2014.

Born in Männedorf, Switzerland, in 1987, Tamás is the founder and owner of Halluci-Nation Ltd. He currently studies media design at Moholy-Nagy University of Arts and Design (MOME). Tamás has a passion for classic Hollywood ﬁ lms and all their contrivances.

Supported by the Hungarian National Film Fund

Supported by the Media Council Film and the Media Funding Scheme

Short Animations

Hobart – A story in the clouds (Hobart)

Iron Egg (Vastojás)

9 min, 2015

13 min, Animated Short, 2014

Director: Hajnalka Harsányi Producer: Hajnalka Harsányi FESTIVALS: marta.benyei@fi lmunio.hu, kati.vajda@fi lmunio.hu SALES: klaudia.androsovits@fi lmalap.hu

Director: Viktória Traub Producer: Marcell Déri Production company: Kilátó Publishing Kft. FESTIVALS, SALES: ironegg.production@gmail.com

The little boy Hobart, a ﬂying pig and a hunter glide through the mysterious world of clouds with unexpected happenings.

These are the adventures of Benedek and the iron hen who ﬁnd their way home from the forest of the singing trees through the swamp of the giant carp.

Hajnalka Harsányi was born in Miskolc in 1987. She studied at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts as a graphic designer and graduated in 2012. Hobart is her debut short animation ﬁ lm.

Viktória studied animation at the Moholy-Nagy University of Arts and Design in Budapest between 2002 and 2008, during which she spent one semester at the animation department of the University of ESAD, Portugal. Both her student ﬁ lms and her diploma ﬁ lm (Rain) were selected for numerous festivals as well as won multiple awards. Supported by the Media Council Film and the Media Funding Scheme

H U N G A R I A N F I L M M AG A Z I N E

Short Animation

Sina and Kore – Genesis (Sina és Koré – Teremtés)

Tale (Mese)

27 min, 2015

7 min, 2015

Director: Emil Goodman Producers: Miklós Kázmér, Zoltán Hídvégi Production company: Umbrella Kreatív Kft. Co-producer: Dániel Kresméry Executive producer: Péter Csornay

Director: Attila Bertóti Producer: József Fülöp Production Company: Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design FESTIVALS: fabics@mome.hu SALES: klaudia.androsovits@ﬁ lmalap.hu

Sina is a lonely traveler with infi nite knowledge. He roams the universe in search of the source of life, hoping that once he fi nds it he himself will be able to create life. He meets Kore, the betrayed and dying mother of Earth and, as it turns out, together they have the ability to do so. However, Sina starts to envy the woman’s creative power, which sends their young world onto a path of destruction. Sina must fight his own nature to earn Kore’s forgiveness so that they can create a world together.

Th is is an animated short about Vanya, Lenochka, the king, the queen, the robber, the guards, the horse, the blacksmith and the ﬁ re chief and his wife – all characters are based on a short story by Daniil Kharms.

Known for his unique combination of live action and various forms of animation, Emil Goodman has directed some of the freshest music videos and shorts in Hungary during the last few years. In 2011 he premiered the trailer for his ﬁ rst feature ﬁ lm project, Henry Waltz. Emil has graduated from Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design.

Attila Bertóti was born in Baia Mare, Romania, in 1985. He graduated as a ﬁ lm director from the Visual Arts and Media Faculty at the Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania in 2009. Between 2010 and 2014, Attila attended the MA animation programme at the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design in Budapest. Supported by the Hungarian National Film Fund

Supported by the Media Council Film and the Media Funding Scheme

Limbo Limbo Travel 15 min, Animated Short, 2014

Coyote and the Rock (Kojot és Szikla) 10 min, 2015 Director: Áron Gauder Producer: Réka Temple Narrator: Hans Peterson Voiceover cast: Andrew Heﬂer, Zoltán Huba, Hans Peterson Production Company: Cinemon Entertainment Contact: johanna@cinemon-entertainment.com In a story about generosity, we follow the adventures of Coyote (the werewolf), Iktome (the spiderman) and Iya (the rock). Together they take us into the spectacular and magical world of Native American folklore. Áron Gauder, director of the feature-length animation ﬁ lm Nyócker!, is an award-winning director, having previously won the Grand Prix at Annecy Film Festival. His most recent work is Coyote and the Rock – a Native American tale that has already won two awards in the United States and has been selected to appear in several more festivals. Awards: San Francisco Film Awards – Excellence Award Best Shorts Film Competition – Merit Award Supported by the Media Council Film and the Media Funding Scheme

H U N G A R I A N F I L M M AG A Z I N E

Director: Zsuzsanna Kreif, Borbála Zétényi Producer: József Fülöp Co-producer: Christian Pfohl Production Company: Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design Co-producer: Lardux Film (Paris) SALES, FESTIVALS: fabics@mome.hu The fi lm begins in a big, technically developed Scandinavian city. Men no longer show any interest towards women; their only love is technology. Women, of course, are very upset about this and continuously attempt increasingly desperate things to get the men’s attention – without any success. There is, however, a way out of this situation: a travel agency called Limbo Limbo Travel that organises women-only adventures to faraway lands where neglected ladies can feel attractive again. Limbo Limbo Travel is the culmination of 4 years of work between Zsuzsanna and Borbála. They started the fi lm as a thesis project at MOME and it ended up as a French-Hungarian co-production. Borbála also worked as a layout and background artist in the fi rst episode of the animated TV series, Candide. Zsuzsanna also took part in the pilot episode of Candide as an art director and later co-directed the fi rst episode of the show with Olivér Hegyi. Supported by the Hungarian National Film Fund

Animation Series A writing desk can have many secrets. For example, that someone lives in it. Next to the books there is place for a miniature town with its inhabitants. The population is plastic but determined a small gang that engages in exciting adventures while discovering their new home. They are the Gyurmók.

Gyurmók 5x4 min, 2015 Director: Frigyes Kapitány Producer: Iván Kapitány Production company: Filmservice Kft. FESTIVALS, SALES : pusztai@ﬁ lmservice.hu

Frigyes Kapitány was born in 1995. The talented young fi lmmaker began work with stop-motion animation at the age of five. After studying some basic rules, he learned this specific genre, such as computer editing and techniques of post-production, as an autodidact. Since then he has created numerous animations, short fi lms and cartoons in a homemade environment, which now means that he has almost 15 years of experience behind his back. He has just started his studies at the Hungarian University of Theatre and Film Arts as a cinematographer.

Supported by the Media Council Film and the Media Funding Scheme

The Hoppies (Hoppi Mesék) 7 min, Animated Short Series, 13 episodes, 2016 Director: Ferenc Rófusz, Andrea Miskédi Producer: Ferenc Rófusz, Tamás Salusinszky Production company: The Hoppies Ltd. Contact: tamas.salusinszky@thehoppies.com The Hoppies is a non-violent series for children aged 2 through to 7. Each episode is about a different holiday from around the world. The Hoppies are cute little creatures living in Hoppiland and they have a huge calendar that shows each international holiday happening on that day. Hoppiland is a multicultural town where you can find Hoppies of all different nationalities. Our stories about birthdays, Christmas, carnivals, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah and Halloween start here. Ferenc Rófusz is an internationally recognised artist who has been distinguished by numerous international awards for his accomplishments in the field of animation. He is also the recipient of the 1981 Oscar for writing, directing and producing the animated short fi lm, The Fly. Supported by the Media Council Film and the Media Funding Scheme

Tales from the Lakeside is a popular children’s book written by Judit Berg based on the four seasons. In Spring we are introduced to the world of the Verdies, living in the glorious green rushes. It is here that we ﬁrst meet Willy Whistle, the daring young Verdie with a heart of gold. Packed with plenty of humour and lots of lessons to be learned, we follow young Willy on his adventures as he battles with the menacing Grimps, helped as always by his Verdie pals and dear old Grandpa.

Tales from the Lakeside (Lengemesék) 6x5 min, 2015 Director: Zsolt Pálﬁ Producer: Réka Temple Production company: Cinemon Entertainment Studio FESTIVAL, SALES: krisztina@cinemon-entertainment.com

Zsolt Pálﬁ was born in 1972 in Budapest. He started his career in animation at Studio II at Pannonia Film Studios in 1991. He worked in the productions of several studios as an animator and ﬁ lm director. Between 2009 and 2012, he taught at the Faculty of Animation at the University of Theatre and Film Arts in Budapest. He currently works at Cinemon Entertainment Studio.

Supported by the Media Council Film and the Media Funding Scheme

H U N G A R I A N F I L M M AG A Z I N E

HNFF WORLD SALES | TORONTO LINE-UP HIGHLIGHTS

Weekend / thriller, 2015, 96 min 70

H U N G A R I A N F I L M M AG A Z I N E

HNFF WORLD SALES | TORONTO LINE-UP HIGHLIGHTS

Mom And Other Loonies in the Family family saga, 2015, 113 min

Argo 2 action comedy, 2015, 91 min

Zero drama, 2015, 83 min

End of Puberty short ﬁ lm, 2015, 13 min

Liza The Fox Fairy black comedy/romance/fantasy, 2015, 98 min

Wednesday Child drama/coming of age, 2015, 94 min

End of Puberty world premiere at Toronto International Film Festival’s Short Cuts selection Scrennings: Public 1 09/13/15 9:45PM Scotiabank 14 (305) Press & Industry 1 09/14/15 1:45PM Scotiabank 5 (134) Public 2 09/19/15 9:45PM Scotiabank 11 (227) MEET US IN TORONTO HNFF World Sales | klaudia.androsovits@filmalap.hu | Tel: +36 30 936 3389 | hnffworldsales.com H U N G A R I A N F I L M M AG A Z I N E

Hungarian National Film Fund Ágnes Havas (CEO) havas.agnes@fi lmalap.hu Csaba Bereczki (Eurimages representative, International director) csaba.bereczki@fi lmalap.hu Márta Bényei (Festival manager) marta.benyei@fi lmunio.hu Kati Vajda (Festival manager) kati.vajda@fi lmunio.hu Csaba Papp (Public relations) csaba.papp@fi lmunio.hu HNFF WORLD SALES Klaudia Androsovits (Sales manager) klaudia.androsovits@filmalap.hu | hnff worldsales.com Hungarian Film Magazine

Published by Hungarian National Film Fund (MNF) Editor-in-chief: Dániel Deák Project coordinator: Genovéva Petrovits Editors: Zsuzsanna Deák Contributors: Janka Barkóczi, Bori Bujdosó, Anita Libor, Gábor Osváth, Barna Szász Original Art Concept: Tünde Kálmán Art directors: Zoltán Bukovics, Vera Rochlitz Photographer: Gábor Valuska Cover photo: Janka Pozsonyi Proofreader: Laura Brown Advertising: hungarianfi lmmagazine@gmail.com Hungarian Film Magazine is published by Hungarian National Film Fund. Published in Hungary September 2015. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or part is forbidden save with the written permission of the publishers. On the cover: Laszlo Nemes, director of Son of Saul www.issuu.com/hungarianfi lm www.fi lmfund.hu www.fi lmunio.eu www.facebook.com/hungarianfi lmmagazine 72

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