Hungarian Film Magazine THE 2017 BERLINALE ISSUE
Master of Invisible Miracles Ildikó Enyedi’s ‘On Body and Soul’ is in competition at the Berlinale
Black & White & Colourful Visions '1945' is screened in the Panorama section and ‘Volcano Island’ is in the Generation Programme Published by
Fingers Crossed - Again ‘Sing’ is nominated for the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short
Hungarian Film Magazine All You Need to Know about Hungarian Cinema
Find all the articles online here: www.issuu.com/hungarianfilm
Find the magazine on the website of the Hungarian Film Fund: www.filmfund.hu
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Photo by László Szabó
Generations Hand in Hand Hungarian cinema is represented by three generations at the Berlinale this year. Passing the baton is essential to keep the classic features of Hungarian film, thus every so often creating something fresh and original. Three generations, three international premieres. Having Ildikó Enyedi's new film, 'On Body and Soul', in competition makes us feel a gentle touch of love; love at a moment when hope fades away, when emotions are hidden, when all that was pink and sweet turns grey and brown. Ildikó helps her characters turn to each other by giving them the tool of having the same dream every night. '1945', Ferenc Török's black and white picture in Panorama, takes place right after WW2. Under the surface of the peaceful Hungarian countryside, memories of the war are not yet buried. The young director Anna Katalin Lovrity shows her animated short, 'Volcano Island', in the Generation Kplus programme. It quite symbolically depicts how a young tigress comes face to face with an approaching older tiger. All of these three films touch the basic needs and wants in relationships that we hardly talk about. Moving images make these needs and wants felt, heard and seen. In their work, Hungarian filmmakers also deal with these emotions from time to time. Enjoy Berlinale, through generations, hand in hand. Ágnes Havas CEO, Hungarian National Film Fund
HUNGARIAN FILM MAGAZINE
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Content
Generations Hand in Hand
1
Opening words from the CEO of the Hungarian National Film Fund
4 News 6
Berlinale News
8 The Hungarian Film Community 13 Production Grants by the HNFF in 2016 14 Media Patronage Programme - A Year to Remember 16
Admissions of Hungarian Films in 2016 – Top 10
18
Incubator Programme
Year two: more talents show up
22
Trained for the Future
Interview with Ildikó Takács
23
Young Talent Appears Before Our Very Eyes
Interview with András Kálmán
24 Festival Successes in 2016 26 The Objective and the Emotional
The production duo behind ‘On Body and Soul’
28
Service Productions: is Mars the Limit?
30 Inaudible Voice of Freedom
32
‘Sing’: A hungarian short’s chance to win an oscar
Hungarian National Film Archive 60 years in motion
34 From Berlin to Berlin 36 Master of Invisible Miracles Portrait of director Ildikó Enyedi 38 We All Carry Wounds
Interview with Ildikó Enyedi
40 Volcano Island Interview with animation director Anna Katalin Lovrity 42 It’s the Sound that Makes it Real Interview with sound designer and producer Péter Benjámin Lukács 44 Against all Odds Rave reviews of ‘Strangled’ 46 1945 - A Plastic Drama with Real-Life Solutions
Interview with director Ferenc Török
48 Coming Soon
Upcoming films: various genres and authors, long-awaited first features and comebacks
56 New Films from Hungary
The latest titles in every genre with cast, crew and contact details
58
Feature Film
65
Feature Documentary
67
TV Drama
68
TV Documentary
69
Educational Documentary
70
Short Documentary
70
Short Film
74
Short Animation
77
Short Animation Series
78 HNFF World Sales - EFM Line-Up Highlights
News ‘The Happiest Barrack' screens in Rotterdam After winning Best Short Documentary Award at the London Short Film Festival in January, ‘The Happiest Barrack’ will screen in the Bright Future section of the International Film Festival Rotterdam. The experimental, semifictional short docu is Noémi Varga’s graduation film from the London Royal College of Art and tells the story of her grandmother’s everyday life in the Kádár era of socialist Hungary. “It serves as a
'The Happiest Barrack'
memento of times past and as a reminder of how socialism colonised the souls of a generation”, says the director. Varga was a finalist in the
Incubator Programme’s 2016 edition with her feature-length documentary project about famed Hungarian designer Tamás Király.
Sundance loves Réka Bucsi 11 months after its world premiere at the Berlinale Shorts, the animation ‘LOVE’ was selected for the short film competition at the Sundance Film Festival. This is nothing new to Réka Bucsi, however, whose graduation film ‘Symphony No. 42’ also screened at both Berlinale and Sundance two years earlier. To read more about where ‘LOVE’ travelled, turn to page 24!
'Beautiful Figure'
Hungarian short was nominated for Student Academy Award
Réka Bucsi
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Competing in the Best Foreign Narrative category last September, director Hajni Kis’ 16-minute short, ‘Beautiful Figure’, was nominated for a Student Academy Award. The film, which is a platonic lesbian love story, was made at
the University of Theatre and Film Arts. Hajni’s only previous film, the short doc ‘2nd Floor’, was screened at numerous film festivals around the world, and now ‘Beautiful Figure’ is also off to a strong start: in February it will screen at the International Short Film Week Regensburg, the Melbourne Queer Film Festival and the BFI Flare: London LGBT Film Festival.
News
For twelve days in October last year, the best of recent Hungarian cinema took over the city of Berlin. Slightly ironically named, Huniwood Film Festival was jointly organised by Collegium Hungaricum Berlin and Speak Easy Project Berlin. It was originally only going to be a mini-festival, but the art-house cinema Babylon enthusiastically came on board and encouraged the organisers to dream big. The result was a colourful showcase of 16 feature films, 10 full-length documentaries and 20 live action and
animated shorts that have been made in the last few years – among them was LászlóGRAPHIC Nemes’ ‘Son of Saul’. ELEMENTS There were also 10 mostly award-winning and globetrotting classics of Hungarian cinema commemorating the 60th anniversary of the 1956 Revolution. With Berlin’s international community in mind, the films were screened in their original language with English subtitles. A total of 1 500 people attended the festival, which
László Nemes (photo by Bea Kallos / MTI)
will be organised again this year between 12-23 October and will showcase the most recent Hungarian movies. Special focus will be given to the award-winning director Zoltán Fábri, whose centenary will be celebrated on 15 October. The organisers also hope to expand the event in order for it to become a travelling festival held in several European cities.
Mac Ruth is nominated for an Oscar Exactly one year ago we revealed that Mac Ruth had been nominated for an Academy Award, and now he is once again a contender! Along with Greg P. Russell, Gary Summers and Jeffrey J. Haboush, Ruth is nominated in the Best Achievement in Sound Mixing category as part of the sound team for the Michael Bay-directed movie ‘13 Hours’, scoring the film’s only nomination.
László Nemes prepares for Sunset After winning the Academy Award for 'Son of Saul', László Nemes is getting ready for his sophomore feature, ‘Sunset’. The film, which takes place in 1915, is once again produced '13 Hours' by Laokoon Filmgroup’s Gábor Rajna and Gábor
Sipos and written by Nemes, Clara Royer and Matthieu Taponier, with Mátyás Erdély as cinematographer. The Hungarian National Film Fund gave a total of 4.8 million euros to the project, its biggest support in 2016 (see page 13 for the chart of all projects supported). Filming will commence this summer.
Ruth is American but has been living in Hungary and working in the film industry since the 1990s. Although ‘13 Hours’ was not made in Hungary, Ruth mostly works in movies that are: he was the production sound mixer for films such as ‘Hellboy II: The Golden Army’, ‘World War Z’, ‘Hercules’, ‘Spy’ and ‘The Martian’, which earned him his previous nomination for an Oscar.
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Berlinale News
'On Body and Soul'
Everything Hungarian in Berlin! Hopefully this is not the first time you hear it, but ‘On Body and Soul’ by Ildikó Enyedi will have its world premiere at the Berlinale Competition. This is the first Hungarian movie in the main competition since ‘Just the Wind’ won the Silver Bear in 2012. To read more about Enyedi turn to page 36! And on pages 24-25 we have another interesting article about Inforg-MM, the company behind both ‘On Body and Soul’ and ‘Just the Wind’. Actress Réka Tenki, the third lead in ‘On Body and Soul’, was chosen by Variety in its annual ‘10 Europeans to Watch’ list. The 30-year-old actress previously worked with György Pálfi, István Szabó and Ferenc Török, and plays the lead role in the upcoming crime noir ‘Budapest Noir’. The group of young actors chosen by Variety will be feted at a reception hosted by Medienboard BerlinBrandenburg.
Réka Tenki and Krisztián Kolovratnik in 'Budapest Noir'
The Panorama section will hold the European premiere of Ferenc Török’s ‘1945’. Produced by the late Iván Angelusz, this is Török’s sixth feature film. It takes place in an Eastern Hungarian village and tells the story of a single day right after the end of World War II. Our interview with the director is on pages 46-47! Iván Angelusz, who passed away last year, was also a co-producer on the Slovak-CzechHungarian film ‘Little Harbour’ directed by Ivete Grofova and which screens at Berlinale Generation Kplus. Another year, another Hungarian animation in the Berlinale! After last year’s ‘LOVE’ by Réka Bucsi, it’s time for ‘Volcano Island’ to have its world premiere in the Generation Kplus section. Anna Katalin Lovrity’s graduation film from MOME is a 9-minute digital animation that takes place on a magical island where a young, naive female tiger is chased by an old, white male tiger. But you can read more about it on pages 40-41! The American short film ‘The Rabbit Hunt’, with Hungarian producer Dóra Nedeczky in the role of associate producer, will screen at Berlinale Shorts just a few weeks after its world premiere at Sundance. Watch out for Bea Palya, the Hungarian singer who plays the title character’s wife in ‘Django’, Etienne Comar’s directorial debut and the opening film at the Berlinale. The French film revolves around Django Reinhardt, the famous guitarist and composer, and his flight from Germanoccupied Paris in 1943. Another Hungarian with an important role in a non-Hungarian film is actor-director Pál Mácsai who stars in ‘Bye Bye Germany’ (Es war einmal in Deutschland...), the latest
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Berlinale News
'The Queen of Spain'
movie by helmer Sam Garbarski (‘Irina Palm’). It will screen as part of the Berlinale Special line-up. Let’s not forget ‘The Queen of Spain’, a movie filmed in Hungary with Laokoon Filmgroup (‘Son of Saul’) as its service producers. Fernando Trueba’s film stars Penélope Cruz, Antonio Resines, Chino Darín and Mandy Patinkin and will screen as a Berlinale Special Gala at the Friedrichstadt-Palast. Jindřich Polák’s ‘Ikarie XB 1’, a Czechoslovakian movie from 1963, will screen in the Retrospective. It is one of 15 movies that are being restored by the Hungarian Film Lab and
'The Headless Appearance'
commissioned by the National Film Archive in Prague. Bori Máté’s ‘The Headless Appearance’ will screen at the Berlin Critics’ Week. The experimental short film was made by painting over the negatives of old family photos. Berlin-based German-Hungarian director Benjamin Cantu will be one of the three members of the Generation 14Plus jury. His first feature, ‘Harvest’, screened in the Generation in 2011. Animation director and recent MOME graduate Zsuzsanna Bányai will be one of the six members of the Ecumenical Jury.
'Volcano Island'
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The
Hungarian Film Community Newly supported films, film distribution and fresh programmes to support trainings, as well as another Academy Award nomination - all the latest developments in the Hungarian film industry
HUNGARIAN FILM SUPPORT SYSTEM FEATURE-LENGTH FILMS SUPPORTED BY THE HUNGARIAN NATIONAL FILM FUND
Live Action Feature
Feature-Length Animation
Feature-Length Documentary
ANIMATIONS, SHORTS, DOCUMENTARIES, TV SUPPORTED BY THE MEDIA COUNCIL’S HUNGARIAN MEDIA PATRONAGE PROGRAMME
Short and Experimental Film
TV Documentary
TV Film
Animated TV Series
Short Animation
Educational Documentaries
Online Content
HOW CAN INTERNATIONAL CO-PRODUCTIONS APPLY TO THE HUNGARIAN NATIONAL FILM FUND? There is no separate call for minority co-productions, but all projects are encouraged to apply with a Hungarian co-producer on board. Each film is judged by the quality of the screenplay and the potential of the project.
APPLICATIONS
1. Script Development
2. Project Development
3. Production
APPLICATION PROCESS Continuous Applications (No fixed deadlines)
Decision in 60 days
with feedback from readers More info: www.filmfund.hu
and the decision of the Committee
Supported in 2016
'The Whisky Robber''
by Hungarian National Film Fund 2016 was another record-breaking year for the Hungarian National Film Fund: a total of 25.7 million euros’ worth of production grants was given to 19 projects (see following page for the complete chart of winning projects). This is slightly greater than the amount in 2015 (25.6 million euros) and significantly more so than that of 2014 (14.5 million euros). This year’s chart includes the 5 low-budget debut features of the Incubator Programme (for year two of the Incubator Programme see pages 18-21). Project development grants were also awarded to 8 projects, of which 6 have already been moved into production. The two that are still in the pre-production stage are ‘Helka’, an adaptation of the children’s novel of the same title, to be directed by Csaba Fazekas, and ‘A Kind of America 3’, Gábor Herendi’s longawaited second sequel to the blockbuster comedy. Script development grants were presented to a total of 49 projects. Writers and directors to have received this support include prolific helmers such as István Szabó and György Szomjas, as well as debutants like Béla Bagota, Cristina Grosan, Krisztina Esztergályos and Ákos Badits.
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Ildikó Enyedi is already working on a new film, which is an adaptation of Milán Füst’s classic novel ‘The Story of My Wife’ and has been a dream project of hers. Also worth mentioning are Bence Fliegauf, Péter Bergendy, Dénes Nagy and Virág Zomborácz – all of whom are also writing their latest – as well as Áron Gauder, who is developing his new feature animation entitled ‘Old Man Coyote’. Documentaries are also often awarded script development funds. The director of ‘Drifter’, Gábor Hörcher, is now prepping his new project ‘Girlfriend Experience’, while Eszter Hajdu (‘Judgment in Hungary’) is developing her new feature-length docu about the legendary guitarist Tamás Barta. A number of other grants were also given to a wide range of projects. Film festivals like Mediawave, Budapest International Documentary Festival, Jameson Cinefest and Transylvania’s Filmtettfeszt all received support from the HNFF, as did the Oscar campaign for ‘Son of Saul’. As a matter of course, the three biggest film schools (the University of Theatre and Film Arts of Budapest, the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design and Eötvös Lóránd University) received support for their students’ graduation movies.
Production Grants by the HNFF in 2016 Title
Director
Support in EUR
Production Company
Sunset
László Nemes
4 811 000
Laokoon FIlmgroup
The Whisky Robber (A Viszkis)
Nimród Antal
3 929 000
Café Film
Pappa Pia
Gábor Csupó
3 249 000
Zene nélkül
Superfluous Man (Felesleges ember)
Kornél Mundruczó
2 237 000
Proton Cinema
Ruben Brandt, the Collector (Ruben Brandt, a gyűjtő)
Milorad Krstić
1 924 000
Ruben Brandt
His Master’s Voice (Az Úr hangja)
György Pálfi
1 924 000
KMH Film
X
Károly Ujj Mészáros
1 568 000
Focus-Fox
Apró mesék (English title TBA)
Attila Szász
1 553 000
Film Positive
Gypsy in Space (Lajkó – Cigány az űrben)
Balázs Lengyel
1 007 000
KMH Film
Sinister Shadow (A rossz árnyék)
András Jeles
834 000
Focus-Fox
Genesis (Genezis)
Árpád Bogdán
802 000
Focus-Fox
Bad Poems (Rossz versek)
Gábor Reisz
738 000
Proton Cinema
White Plastic Sky* (Műanyag égbolt)
Tibor Bánóczki, Sarolta Szabó
263 000
Salto Film
One Day* (Egy nap)
Zsófia Szilágyi
200 000
Filmpartners
The Seventh Halberdier* (Hetedik alabárdos)
Csaba Vékes
200 000
Hetal Film
Valley of Flowers* (Virágvölgy)
László Csuja
200 000
Focus-Fox
Out
György Kristóf
142 000
KMH Film
Liquid Gold (Folyékony arany)
Tamás Almási
96 000
Vinum Film
Six Lessons* (Hat könnyű lecke)
Dorottya Zurbó
70 000
Tranzit Film
* Winning projects of the 2015 Incubator Programme
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Media Patronage Programme:
'Sing'
A Year to Remember
Last year when we sat down with Tamás Kollarik, the coordinator of the Media Council’s Media Patronage Programme, he told us that he was proud of the fact that in its first five years the programme had helped make more than 700 film projects with an amount nearing 22.8 million euros. (For the full interview online, see our Cannes 2016 issue!) These numbers have since grown, but Mr. Kollarik has even more good news to be happy about. The past twelve months have brought the Media Patronage Programme its first films competing in Berlin, Cannes and Sundance – as well as its first nomination for the European Film Awards. Not to mention an Oscar nomination. The statistics for festival presence was largely boosted by Réka Bucsi’s animation ‘LOVE’, which has been selected for more than 110 festivals since its debut at the Berlinale Shorts last year. With festivals like SXSW South by Southwest, Hong Kong, Indie Lisboa, LA Film Fest, Krakow Film Festival, Melbourne IFF, Odense IFF and many more, it was no surprise when the jury in Uppsala granted it the European Film Awards prize. Winning that means the film will compete at the European Film Academy’s gala in Berlin this autumn. And just when you may have thought that the list could not get any longer, Sundance also chose Bucsi’s movie to be in its Short Film Competition despite having screened at numerous North American festivals already.
'LOVE'
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Another hugely successful animation of 2016 was Luca Tóth’s ‘Superbia’, which had its world premiere at the Cannes Semaine de la Critique and now has an extensive list of festivals, with 40 more selections (including Encounters and Chicago IFF) and an Audience Award from Love and Anarchy Helsinki, as well as a Special Jury Mention from AFI Fest. It is probably worth noting that both ‘LOVE’ and ‘Superbia’ are co-productions: ‘LOVE’ was supported by France’s CNC and Arte, while ‘Superbia’ received financing from both the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Kristóf Deák’s live action, ‘Sing’, is probably the biggest success story yet. The heart-warming short film not only won awards at both the Short Shorts Tokyo and the Chicago International Children’s Film Festival, but it was also shortlisted and just recently nominated for an Oscar. Needless to say, we have a separate article about this little film: turn to pages 30-31! Beyond the three previously mentioned shorts, the Media Patronage Programme is of course supporting films in many other categories, including documentaries, educational/nature docs and animated series, as well as TV-film production and TV film script development. Unfortunately this page is not long enough to allow us to enumerate everything, but one project you might have already heard of is ‘Demimonde’, the TV movie directed by Attila Szász and which was not only released theatrically in Hungary after its television premiere, but has also succesfully been competing at festivals around the world. Check out the catalogue of Hungarian films at the end of this issue (pages 56-77) to find a selection of movies and series supported by the Media Patronage Programme.
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 0
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
More info: www.filmfund.hu HUNGARIAN FILM MAGAZINE
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ADMISSIONS OF HUNGARIAN FILMS IN 2016 THE TOP 10
TITLE
DIRECTOR
ADMISSIONS
COMPANY
Son of Saul
László Nemes
169 693 (268 714*)
Laokoon Filmgroup
The Horsearcher
Géza Kaszás
81 981
Lilród Film
Strangled
Árpád Sopsits
40 596**
Focus-Fox
Kills on Wheels
Attila Till
34 968
Laokoon Filmgroup
#atfirstsight
Dániel Tiszeker
33 920**
Színfolt Film
Think of Me
András Kern
29 076
Tivoli Film
It’s Not the Time of My Life
Szabolcs Hajdu
28 104**
Filmworks
Loop
Isti Madarász
15 132
Café Film
Well
Attila Gigor
13 863
KMH Film
Mom and Other Loonies in the Family
Ibolya Fekete
13 732 (39 389*)
CinemaFilm
* Total including admissions from 2015. ** Still in cinemas 16
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M A F I L M
S T U D I O S
n our services
sound stages, standing sets, props, costumes and armours
n Budapest Studios
– 10 minutes from the City Centre n 800
sqm stage with standing green screen and water tank, 400 sqm stage with green screen, n further smaller studios, rehearsal- and supporting rooms n Mafilm Audio – audio post-production studio, Dolby Digital sound mixing
n Fót Studios
– 10 km from Budapest – 57 acre facility n 1600
sqm and 1000 sqm sound stages, 55 m long, 6 m height exterior green screen n 11 000 sqm medieval standing set (exterior and interior sets) – expandable, extendable on demand The Phantom of the Opera, Anna Karenina, Cyrano, Brother Cadfel, A Kid in King Arthur’s Court, Evita, The Hunchback, A Knight in Camelot, Crime and Punishment, Mary Mother of Jesus, The Prince and the Pauper, Spy Game, I Spy, Dinotopia, Underworld, Being Julia, The Lion in Winter, A Christmas Carol, Fateless, Copying Beethoven, Eragon, Robin Hood, Amusement, John Adams, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, Season of the Witch, Le Rafle, The Pillars of the Earth, Memories of Anne Frank, The Dept, The Raven, Bel Ami, World Without End, Asterix, The Centenarian, Kenau, Alatriste, Houdini, Spy, The Last Kingdom, Casanova, Napoléon
CONTACT
Hungarian National Film Fund MAFILM Studios • H-1145 Budapest, Róna utca 174. Phone: +36 1 252-2870 • E-mail: production@mafilm.hu • www.mafilm.hu
Incubator Programme Year Two: More Talents to Show Up The Hungarian National Film Fund’s Incubator Programme continued with its second year. Five more talented young directors are getting the chance to create their debut feature films within the framework of the programme. In 2015, the Hungarian National Film Fund released its Incubator Programme to help young directors create their first feature film. The main ambition of the programme is to make their debuts as simple as possible: directors can apply with a treatment, and after a pre-selection a jury and a professional audience choose the best film plans at a pitching forum. The Hungarian National Film Fund then provides financial support that amounts to a maximum of 70 000 euro for each feature documentary, 200 000 euro for each feature film and 265 000 euro for each animation – excluding the 25 % tax rebate. The support also includes project development workshops, consultations and professional assistance presented by both the Hungarian National Film Fund and the mentors. In 2015 the five projects to receive the support (‘White Plastic Sky’, ‘Valley of Flowers’, ‘The Seventh Halberdier’, ‘One Day’ and ‘Lessons in Hungarian’) are now in pre-production or production phases. The first two editions showed that the Incubator Programme is attractive for young directors: 67 treatments were received for the first call in 2015 and the following year the number of submitted projects increased to 69. Out of the submitted applications, five film professionals chose 10 projects. The selectors were the Incubator Programme mentors: Cannes Camera d’Or-winning director Ildikó Enyedi (who has her newest feature ‘On Body and Soul’ in the Official Competition of the Berlinale), SXSW Gamechanger Prize-winning scriptwriter and director Yvonne Kerékgyártó (‘Free Entry’, 2014) and three powerhouse producers, Ági Pataki of Filmpartners, Viktória Petrányi of Proton Cinema and Ferenc Pusztai of KMH Film.
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The 10 projects that were nominated are: ‘A Boy’ by Alexa Bakony; ‘Her Dangerous Feet’ by Fanni Szilágyi; ‘Guerilla’ by György Mór Kárpáti; ‘Impromptu’ by Zoltán Nagy; ‘Larry’ by Szilárd Bernáth; ‘No One’s Going Anywhere’ by Attila Hartung; ‘Not a Good Place’ by Péter Szeiler; ‘Tamás Király’ by Noémi Varga; ‘Tales from the Cell’ by Ábel Visky; and ‘VHS’ by Sándor Csoma. These projects were presented at a pitching forum in November in one of the coolest arthouse cinemas in Budapest (Toldi mozi), where five of the 10 talents were then selected to proceed and receive scriptwriting and production support. Just like in 2015, the forum turned out to be a full-house event, together with stimulating professional discussions and debates. Three projects were chosen by an acclaimed jury (Zsuzsanna Bánkúti, Match Factory; Gábor Böszörményi, Mozinet; Réka Divinyi, scripwriter; Lili Horváth, director; and Attila Varró, film theorist) and two more by the professional audience of the forum. The five winning films to receive the support are ‘A Boy’, ‘Guerilla’, ‘Impromptu’, ‘No One’s Going Anywhere’ and ‘Tales from the Cell’. The Hungarian National Film Fund also awarded a development grant to Sándor Csoma for ‘VHS’. Dániel Deák
Photos by Janka Pozsonyi
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The Winning Projects of the Incubator Programme
After the successful first edition of the Incubator Programme, five more low-budget feature film projects got the green light on 23 November at the Incubator Pitching Forum. With the support of the Hungarian National Film Fund, they will receive support to develop and produce their films. Live action pieces from classic arthouse projects to comingof-age stories, as well as a documentary feature among the winning projects.
Alexa Bakony
A Boy
The Tuza family lives in the north-eastern part of Hungary, in Nyírtelek. Their youngest child is 16-year-old Jasmin. For a while now, Jasmin has been called Tobias. From a very early age he knew he was born in the wrong body. He came out recently as a transgender boy and luckily his family gives him all the acceptance and support he needs. The hard part is yet to come. But the law establishes that he can only start the process of transformation once he reaches adulthood, which means two more long years of waiting. Till then, every day is a fight with the conservative community he lives in. Contact: info@filmfabriq.hu
György Mór Kárpáti It is 1849, the end of the war of independence. After hiding from conscription, Barnabás sets out to find his brother who is fighting in a guerrilla group. Stuck in the forest, the guerrillas consider his wounded brother a hero – while he is a rookie and has to prove he is not afraid. While Barnabás is trying hard to become part of the militant community, he gets caught in a love triangle: he begins an affair with a woman his brother is also in love with. During combat, Barnabás has to increasingly take part in the cruelty. Contact: viktoria@protoncinema.hu
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Guerilla
Zoltán Nagy
Dávid is a violin player in a youth music orchestra. During their annual concert tour, the group’s life gets thrown into turmoil after 13-year-old Nóri seeks help when she tells Dávid and his peers that she is being regularly molested by the orchestra’s 60-year-old conductor. The teens soon get hard evidence when they are able to record an intimate scene between Nóri and the conductor. Dávid wants to protect Nóri, but things get even more complicated when a secret attraction between them unfolds. More and more girls come forward with similar experiences, and we find out that with Nóri it might have been more than just sexual harassment. The children’s parents want the case to disappear, but Dávid and his team try to bring the conductor to justice.
Impromptu
Contact: osvathgabor@filmfabriq.hu
Attila Hartung
No One's Going Anywhere
Dani is an immature, effeminate nobody. He’s an overgrown freak who owes everything to his parents – at least that’s what he, at 18, thinks of himself. That’s before they suffer a serious car accident on a country road. Dani suddenly freezes just as he is sprinting for the train to the hospital. He can’t face hopping on, nor can he bring himself to accept the possibility that he may lose his parents. Running from his thoughts and emotions, he finds himself in Budapest at night, where his Odyssey begins. The film tells the story of those feverish six hours: how Dani seemingly drifts, avoiding reality and trying desperately to prove himself, all the while becoming a man the hard way. Contact: petra@filmteam.hu
‘Tales from the Cell’ is a creative documentary about the power of storytelling. Men sentenced to prison and deprived of their freedom create imaginary worlds in which their children are able to overcome all hurdles and reach their goal. When tales come alive the limitations of everyday reality vanish, enabling fathers and their children to be part of the same story again. On the one hand the film is a bridge connecting the actors, and on the other hand it is a sensitive and genuine record of their complex relationships.
Ábel Visky
Tales from the Cell
Contact: eszter@protoncinema.hu
Special Award Sándor Csoma's project, 'VHS' was supported with the development grant of the HNFF HUNGARIAN FILM MAGAZINE
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Trained for the Future The lack of trained film professionals required a call for action: Ildikó Katalin Takács Consultant to Hungarian National Film Fund, talks about supporting professional education to lessen the shortage of skill. The funding system of the Hungarian National Film Fund was more or less confined to supporting film production. What led to the funding of professional film education as well? Based on information from the industry and on the National Film Fund’s own experience, the Fund believed that there is a significant shortage of industry professionals. We conducted an industry research in 2015, which confirmed this assumption and revealed that the existing training structure does not remedy the problem. Unfortunately it matters little that Hungary has one of the most advantageous tax rebate systems in Europe or a high-quality infrastructure of filmmaking; the lack of any reinforcement of industry professionals could generate a setback for the upward surge in the national film industry and could prevent future service productions from being brought to Hungary. What elements does the training consist of? I will just mention a few here. Last year, for the 15 industry professions in demand, the National Film Fund published calls for tender for training institutions. Film industry professionals were involved in the decision-making process, and out of the training programmes, 11 were awarded with funding that includes various training, for example for script supervisors, assistant directors and CGI professionals. The National Film Fund supports the training courses from the income that is made from the filmtraining levy. All productions shot in Hungary with a budget of over HUF 10 million contribute of the direct production costs to support Hungarian film education programmes. Moreover, the National Film Fund has launched the website www.filmesgyakornok.hu, an online ‘market place’ for trainees who want to gain handson experience in film productions. According to the level of direct production costs, producers are now obliged to employ a certain number of trainees during the film production stage. Last December the Film Fund invited the script supervisor Carmen Tabányi to hold a 3-day workshop in English at the Budapest Metropolitan University. Tabányi has gained immense
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Ildikó Takács (photo by Gábor Valuska) experience in both international and national productions and her workshop was a great success. It resulted in a never-before-seen application rate to the supported script supervisor course. Does the National Film Fund plan to support individuals who, due to their social background, might have a harder time entering the community? Absolutely. The training programme’s funding is also there to support this reality because the eventual beneficiaries are the trainees themselves. The tuition fees of the funded courses are also reduced thanks to the Film Fund’s support. Individuals at the beginning of their career don’t often know how diverse the job opportunities in this industry are; they are not familiar with professions apart from that of director, DOP and screenwriter. We have therefore created a browser on the filmesgyakornok.hu website that introduces the film production structure and the various professions in the industry. What are the education programme’s future plans? There are many. For starters, I would mention the trainee system that is being continuously improved based on the feedback received; we want to make it more effective and beneficial for producers and trainees. We will publish a a new call for tender for film education institutions within the next few weeks. The National Film Fund’s browser is expanding with films and interviews. We plan to organise a public industry market where acclaimed representatives can talk about their professions in order to make it easier for career entrants to navigate through the labyrinth of the film industry. We will also arrange additional workshops on different film professions this year. Dániel Deák
Young Talent Appears Before Our Very Eyes András Kálmán talks about the current state of affairs of the film marketing and distribution system and whether hard beginnings can indeed make good endings. Why did the Hungarian Film Fund think it necessary to support the marketing of Hungarian films? Supporting the distribution and marketing of films is not something new; there has been talk about reviving this funding form for years now. In a market where each individual film is sure not to make any profit, motion pictures that are produced domestically need the support. A funding system can only be effective if it covers all areas of film production: development, production and distribution; even sales! At least in my opinion. Unfortunately, none of these stages in film production can stand on their own economically. On a side note, the film industry as a whole makes a profit on the market – but elsewhere this isn’t always obvious. Funding needs to be integrated into the Hungarian film industry by stimulating and motivating the market mindset in the supported branches, as well as by making these branches function in a kind of symbiosis as opposed to being in conflict with each other. This is the goal of the funding system that has been introduced and this is precisely why it uses international terms and parameters. The mission is not impossible, but nor can it be solved overnight. In a market dominated by blockbusters and multiplex cinemas, what can the selling point of Hungarian films be? Films are being made right at our doorstep: young talent appears before our very eyes. Our own actors star in these films. We can meet them in András Kálmán (photo by Gábor Valuska)
person and read about them in the news. But the question remains: what can these domestic films carry over from mainstream cinema? Will they be quintessentially Hungarian or well-made replicas? The two present arguments both for and against. The truth is, though, that craftsmanship is fundamental and cannot be replaced. Effective film marketing is the fruits of the joint labour of the production company, the distributor and the National Film Fund. In practice, how do the three work together? Well the ball might not be perfectly round but at least it’s rolling. Producers are accustomed to domestic support and to a level of independence; directors used to dominate the industry; and while distributors may have learned to adapt the foreign film campaign formula, they are not prepared for the creative process. Meanwhile, the National Film Fund strives to listen to and represent everyone – which is impossible! There simply aren’t enough experienced trailer editors or graphic designers right now, and it’s still difficult to get the commercial approach across to filmmakers. For the time being we just have to consider it a success when a Hungarian film has a distributor. That said, films are gradually getting better, as are their marketing campaigns. I must mention John Durie here, the advisor at the National Film Fund, who brings extensive international experience to the practical side of the work. The movie as a product or as part of the communication process only comes up in the distribution phase; it has nothing to do with ratings or viewership in the development- or production-funding stages. Acknowledging distributional aspects in the development stage is something that has already surfaced, but a credit system might not go astray in the long run either. In the last couple of years, so-called auteur films ('Son of Saul') and midcult movies ('Liza the Fox Fairy or Strangled') have been among the highest rated. As a member of the National Film Fund’s decision-making board you have insight into upcoming Hungarian film projects. Are there any genre movies in particular that are expected to capture the audience’s heart? The biggest strength of Hungarian film production (and of the National Film Fund) is the diversity of films. Among those that are soon to be released, there is an experimental film, a historical drama, a film noir, a crime story, a historical adventure film, a musical comedy and a biopic. I don’t know how they will resonate with viewers, but I don’t doubt that there will be some audience favourites as well. Dániel Deák
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Festival successes in 2016
2015 was one of the greatest years for Hungarian film history: László Nemes’ first feature, 'Son of Saul', was selected for the Cannes Film Festival programme and won the Grand Jury Prize, becoming famous worldwide for its technical finesse, story and the performance of its main actor, Géza Röhrig. But 2016 was even better, with 'Son of Saul' reaching the highest recognition in the country’s film industry: first it won the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film (the first time ever for a Hungarian movie) and the Independent Spirit Award’s prize, then it won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, 34 years after István Szabó’s Mephisto. The triumph of 'Son of Saul' does not end there though, for it is nominated for the BAFTA, the prestigious British film awards. Bence Fliegauf is a returning guest at Berlinale. In 2012, Fliegauf won the Silver Bear for 'Just the Wind'. In 2016, his latest film, 'Lily Lane', was screened at the Berlinale Forum, one of the most renowned competitions for experimental films, where his earlier features, 'Rengeteg' and 'Dealer', had also been presented. 'Lily Lane', an odd story about a mother-son relationship, found an international distributor during the festival and has since been selected into a number of other international film festivals, including in Seattle, Melbourne, Warsaw and Vancouver, as well as winning the Critics’ Choice at the Palić Film Festival. 'LOVE'
Due to the great success of 'Son of Saul', the Hungarian film industry is becoming increasingly proud of its talent, and rightfully so. If we look back at 2016, we can see that Hungarian films are even more powerful and are being shown all over the world at the largest and most distinguished festivals.
'The Noise of Licking' We can, however, declare that the contemporary Hungarian film industry’s most powerful segment is animation, whose current new wave produces more and more films and artists. Réka Bucsi’s first independent short film, 'LOVE', also debuted at Berlinale last year. The surreal love story has since been selected for more than 100 festivals all over the world, receiving the EFA Award at the Uppsala International Short Film Festival and therefore automatically being nominated for a European Film Academy Award. This year seems equally promising, as the film has been shortlisted for Cartoon d’Or, was given the Special Award by the student jury of the BFI London Film Festival, and was in official competition at Sundance. Last year was also the year Luca Tóth made her first independent short, which debuted in Cannes at the Critic’s Week (Semaine de la Critique). 'Superbia', which shamelessly raises gender questions, was screened at the Encounters Short Film Festival, the Sarajevo Film Festival and the Palm Springs ShortFest, and AFI FEST’s short film jury awarded it for its visual aesthetics. Every year the animation graduates of MoholyNagy University of Art and Design (MOME) present shorts that undoubtedly achieve great success at the festivals around the world. This year Nadja Andrasev’s novel adaptation 'The
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performance as well. Hajdu’s feature competed in Palm Springs, Tbilisi and Bratislava, and was awarded Best Film and Best Editing at the 4th Bosphorus Film Festival. The low-cost movie, which was made without the support of the Hungarian National Film Fund, became very popular within a short period of time, and Hungarian viewers loved having special screenings with the main cast in their own apartments. 'Kills on Wheels'
Noise of Licking', about the love between a cat and a semi-naked woman, debuted at the Cinéfondation in Cannes, where the director received a shared third prize for her movie. 'The Noise of Licking' was also selected into the Graduation Film category of the Annecy International Animated Film Festival and into the Palm Springs ShortFest, and won the Grand Prize for Best Graduation Film at Biaf Ani and Best Animation at the Denver Film Festival. This year it is being screened at Slamdance. Another MOME graduate, Katinka Éva Bognár, has had great success as well: her graduation film, 'Hugo Bumfeldt', was awarded at the Kerry Film Festival in Ireland and won the Children’s Award at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen as well as Best Animation Short at the Austin Film Festival, which also qualified it for the 90th Academy Awards in the Best Animation Short category.
Regarding shorts, Kristóf Deák’s retro movie about intimidation and repression has also had a great festival tour. 'Sing' won the Short Film category as well as the People’s Choice Award at the 40th TIFF, not to mention the Audience Awards at the Festival Du Cinéma Européen and at the Sapporo Shortfest. As the winner of the Chicago International Children’s Film Festival and of the Short Shorts in Tokyo, it is nominated for Best Live Action Short Film at the 89th Academy Awards., where no Hungarian movie has made the cut in the past 53 years. Roland Vranik’s third feature, 'The Citizen', was already invited to the Stockholm Film Festival last year. The film, about a political refugee who at any cost tries to integrate and become a Hungarian citizen, is showing in Hungarian cinemas from the end of January.
Dávid Dell’Edera made his graduation film, 'Balcony', at the Budapest Metropolitan University and was also selected for the Annecy International Animated Film Festival, where it recieved the Jury Award in the Graduation Film category. Furthermore, it won the Cartoon d’Or nomination at the 22nd Encounters Short Film and Animation Festival. 'Kills on Wheels', the gangster comedy directed by Attila Till, was invited to the East of the West section at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival and won several other prizes, including the Roger Ebert Award at the Chicago International Film Festival, the Audience Award at the Palić Film Festival and Best Feature Film at the Thessaloniki International Film Festival. It was also Hungary’s nominee in the Best Foreign Language Film category at the 89th Academy Awards. Szabolcs Hajdu’s own stage adaptation, 'It’s Not the Time of My Life', was screened at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival where it won the Crystal Globe, and the director – who was also the main actor – was awarded for his
'It's Not the Time of My Life'
Hungarian movies were shown at several international festivals in 2016, and this trend does not look any different this year, as there are already two Hungarian films which will be screened at the Berlinale. The premiere of Ildikó Enyedi’s feature, 'On Body and Soul', is the first, and the graduation film of a young animator, Anna Kata Lovrity’s 'Volcano Island', will be the second to compete. Zsófia Herczeg
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The Objective and the Emotional – The production duo
behind 'On Body and Soul' Inforg-M&M Film produced the last Hungarian feature that was in competition at the Berlinale – 'Just the Wind', in 2012 – and now they’re back with 'On Body and Soul', Ildikó Enyedi’s new feature. We talked to the two leading producers behind the operation, András Muhi and Mónika Mécs. 'Just the Wind'
Before there was Inforg-M&M Film there was Inforg Studio, András Muhi’s production company established in 1999 and which produced features, shorts, documentaries and animation, as well as experimental films. The company expanded very quickly, and quite early on Inforg Studio and M&M Film – the production company owned by Mónika Mécs and her husband Ernő Mesterházy – started working on co-productions. Their first project together was 'Madárszabadító, felhő, szél' by István Szaladják in 2006, followed by 'Milky Way' (2007), the experimental feature by acclaimed director Bence Fliegauf, then 'Panic' (2008), the first feature by popular Hungarian television personality Attila Till, and finally Fliegauf’s sci-fi thriller, 'Womb' (2010). As the above list already suggests, Inforg Studio helped to launch the career of several young
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Mónika Mécs (photo by Gábor Valuska)
filmmakers, among them László Nemes, whose first short, 'With a Little Patience', was produced by the company. They were also behind 'Before Dawn', the successful short by Bálint Kenyeres, which debuted in the short film competition at Cannes and went on to win the European Film Award. And of course the intertwining international career of Muhi and Fliegauf, which started with 'Forest' and 'Dealer', both in the Forum section of the Berlinale in 2003 and 2004, respectively. When the previous film-financing system collapsed in 2010, Inforg Studio more or less went down with it. However, it soon returned in the form of Inforg-M&M Film, formalising the partnership between the two companies that had already been in place for years. Mécs and Muhi think of themselves as “the same kind of producer, meaning that more often than not we are at least as interested in the creative side as the business side”, as Mécs puts it. While Muhi studied law, Mécs is a graduate of the film producer course at the University of Theatre and Film Arts in Budapest, where “emphasis was placed on educating producers, who are not just businesspeople, but who also represent a certain taste and world view, which is expressed in their films”. She says that “this gave me a very strong foundation, but later I learnt a huge amount from András, whose taste and professionalism I trust without reservation. It’s safe to say that I think of him as my mentor.” Muhi explains his approach by highlighting that “I always tried to create value within the universe
was Bence Fliegauf’s 'Just the Wind', which was in competition in 2012 and won the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize. The film is based on the series of racially motivated murders of Roma people that took place in Hungary in 2008-2009. It is a fictionalised story that has had universal resonance. The second film is 'On Body and Soul', the first feature by Ildikó Enyedi ('My Twentieth Century', 'Magic Hunter' and 'Simon the Magician') in 18 years. It is a love story about two people who keep appearing in each other’s dreams but don’t find it so easy to connect in real life. As the film deals with the relatable subject of the difficulties of love and has a sensitively humorous tone, the producers trust that it will touch audiences both abroad and in Hungary.
András Muhi (photo by Janka Pozsonyi) of European auteur cinema, and at the same time I always embraced projects that represented something new in Hungarian cinema, be that a thematic, stylistic or technical novelty.” But there is also a certain difference between the processes of the two producers. Muhi refers to himself as the objective one: he says it is not necessary for him to personally like the film he is making if he thinks it is of value. Mécs represents a more emotional approach: “If I am touched by the script I will probably try to make it.” They also have a third partner, Mécs’s husband Ernő Mesterházy, who is less involved with the creative side of the projects and works more in the background, making sure that all the financial and organisational elements are in place. So far two features have been produced under the Inforg-M&M Film banner, and both were invited to compete at the Berlinale. The first Upcoming projects by Inforg-M&M Film 'Van egy határ': a short by Barnabás Tóth set in the 1950s about a father and son trying to escape from the East to the West. 'Spiral': the first feature by Cecília Felméri, which is planned to go into production this summer. The Hungarian-Romanian co-production is a timeless story about relationships. 'Ginkgo': to be co-directed by Gábor Rohonyi and Mónika Mécs – her feature debut –, this drama is inspired by the story of the Irish driver who ran over and killed two Hungarian children near Budapest in 2000. 'The Story of My Wife': Ildikó Enyedi’s next feature, based on the novel by Milán Füst, is in development.
The development of 'On Body and Soul' started more than ten years ago, but once Inforg-M&M Film received a grant from the Hungarian National Film Fund the process was easy, as by that point the script only needed a few small tweaks. As Mécs puts it, “this was one of those films that really wanted to be born”. Even the usually reserved Muhi blurts out that “this is
'On Body and Soul' the best script I’ve ever read”. Along the way it turned into somewhat of a family project too, when Muhi’s two children got involved with the film: András Pires Muhi, who is already an experienced producer and director in his own right, was the line producer, while Zsófia Muhi – together with Irma Ascher – was responsible for casting. The production duo are very content with the way 'On Body and Soul' has turned out: “it has a magical feel to it, which is visualised beautifully”, says Mécs, who also showers praise on the leading actors, Alexandra Borbély and Géza Morcsányi, admitting that they were originally very worried about the fact that Ildikó Enyedi wanted a non-professional in the lead male role, “but Ildikó just knew that this would work, and she kept insisting, against our protests. She turned out to be right.” Bori Bujdosó HUNGARIAN FILM MAGAZINE
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‘Blade Runner 2049’
Service Productions: is Mars the Limit? This time last year we thought that our industry in 2015 was as busy as it could ever be. Now, one year later, it seems as if that was only a prelude to 2016! 28
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Much of it is thanks to the almost 6-month production of ‘Blade Runner 2049’, the follow-up to Ridley Scott’s 1982 sci-fi classic. Starring Ryan Gosling and of course Harrison Ford, the sequel was entirely filmed in Hungary with the helmer of ‘Arrival’, Denis Villeneuve, in the director’s chair. Our guess is that this was the biggest production to ever come to Hungary – maybe only behind Ridley Scott’s own ‘The Martian’ a year earlier. Surprisingly enough, the box office hit starring Matt Damon was not the only Red Planet-set project made in Hungary: National Geographic’s ‘Mars’, a global event series executive produced by Brian Grazer and Ron Howard, was seen by 36 million viewers around the globe last autumn and became the most DVR-ed series in the
‘Queen of Spain’
network’s history. A second season has already been ordered. Also doing good business is NBC’s ‘Emerald City’, a modern take on ‘The Wizard of Oz’ starring Vincent D’Onofrio. All of the episodes were directed by the visionary Tarsem Singh. The filming of the 10-episode show took place in Hungary after a smaller portion had been done in Spain. ‘Emerald City’ debuted on NBC in January 2017 and produced solid ratings, but there is no word of a second season yet. A number of returning TV shows occupied the soundstages in and around Budapest, where FX’s ‘Tyrant’, set in the Middle East, and Canada’s WW2 drama, ‘X Company’, both filmed their third and final seasons and the epic ‘The Last Kingdom’ shot its second. The latter, which is an adaptation of Bernard Cornwell’s historical novel series ‘The Saxon Stories’, is now not only a BBC production, but Netflix has also come on board for the second season, set to premiere on the streaming service this year. Last year, 7.1 million and 5.5 million people tuned in, respectively, to watch the first two episodes of the United Kingdom’s new ITV series, ‘Maigret’, with Rowan Atkinson in the role of the iconic French detective. ITV ordered two more 90-minute episodes, so 3-month-long filming commenced in November for ‘Night at the Crossroads’ and ‘Maigret in Montmartre’. Interestingly, this is not the first time Budapest substituted Paris in the 1950s; in the early 1990s, the previous adaptation of Georges Simenon’s novels, with Michael Gambon in the lead role, was also filmed in the Hungarian capital! Besides the returning ones, new TV shows included ‘Jamestown’, a drama for UK’s Sky1 about English settlers in America in 1617, and ‘The Terror’, AMC’s horror drama set in the 19th century about a ship and a mysterious underwater creature. And here’s just a glimpse into 2017: currently prepping for a more than 6-monthlong shoot is TNT’s ‘The Alienist’, which is based on Caleb Carr’s novel of the same title, starring Daniel Brühl, Luke Evans and Dakota Fanning. A significant number of feature films were also made in Hungary last year – most notably ‘The Coldest City’, a Cold War thriller starring Charlize Theron and James McAvoy, ‘Terminal’, a thriller starring Margot Robbie, Simon Pegg and Mike Myers, and ‘Promise at Dawn’ starring Pierre Niney and Charlotte Gainsbourg. The list could go on for many more pages; it is safe to say that anywhere you go you will find movies that are made in Hungary, be it at the US box office or at the biggest festivals. ‘Queen of
‘The Last Kingdom’
‘Maigret’
‘Emerald City’
‘Tyrant’ Spain’, starring Penélope Cruz, is now screening at the Berlinale, and Sundance Film Festival’s biggest seller, ‘Mudbound’, also spent a couple of days shooting in Hungary. And what will 2017 bring to Hungary in terms of service productions? We are off to a strong start with two big-budget US movies already underway: ‘Red Sparrow’, an espionage thriller starring Jennifer Lawrence, and ‘Robin Hood’, a new take on the classic tale starring Taron Egerton, Jamie Dorman and Jamie Foxx as Little John. Gábor Osváth
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Inaudible Voice of Freedom For two consecutive years now, two Hungarian movies have been nominated for an Oscar: last year László Nemes’ first feature, ‘Son of Saul’ (Saul fia), won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and this year Kristóf Deák’s ‘Sing’ (Mindenki) has been nominated for Best Live Action Short. 53 years after István Szabó’s graduation movie ‘Concert’ (Koncert) competed in the same category, there is finally another Hungarian short with the chance to win an Oscar. The idea of ‘Sing’ came from an anecdote by the director’s Swedish flatmate in London. As a child, she was told not to sing out loud in the school choir so as to keep her voice out. She obeyed. Much to Deák’s surprise, it turned out that this was not an isolated incident and many people recounted a very similar story to him. The original anecdote captured the director’s imagination because of its underhand cruelty and he “started to realise there was more of a universal message behind it” and that “the social message in the film comes from this systemwide injustice where kids sort of come up with their own solution to fight it”. Deák already had this story back in 2012 and started developing it with a couple of British screenwriters with whom he has often collaborated. There was a short time when it wasn’t working out, so he dropped the story for a year. He later returned to it, came up with an uplifting ending and decided it should be set in Hungary in the early nineties - the when and where of his own childhood. He used his own memories and changed the teacher’s character a bit as well. The project was rejected several times until 2014, when it won 8 million forints at the Zoltán Huszárik competition in the framework of the National Media and Infocommunications Authority’s Hungarian Media Patronage Programme. ‘Sing’ could finally move forward: it found a production house in Meteor Film, Róbert Maly (known for the Karlovy Vary awardwinning feature ‘The Wednesday Child’) became the director of photography and Ádám Balázs composed the music. After winning the Zoltán Huszárik competition, the search began for actors and locations. The casting was a lengthy process. Nearly 80 kids 30
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'Sing' with acting experience were auditioned. After three selection rounds, Dorka Gáspárfalvi and Dorottya Hais were chosen for the main roles. Finding the right choir members required a whole different approach: Deák wanted the singers to come from the same place, so they listened to a few well-known choirs in Hungary until they decided upon the Bakáts Music Primary School choir. The kids were full of life, a little mischievous and buzzed with excitement, but their choir leader was able to keep them under control. The teacher in the film is played by Zsófia Szatmári, whom the director knew from the internationally acclaimed theatre group under Béla Pintér. Deák said that he was impressed by her fearlessness of playing an ugly, hardly likeable and monstrous character who could nevertheless capture and hold the audience’s List of Selected Awards Won Short Shorts Film Festival & Asia – Grand Prix Short Shorts Film Festival & Asia – Best International Short Award Short Shorts Film Festival & Asia – Audience Award TIFF Kids - Toronto International Film Festival – People’s Choice Award for Favourite Short Film 32nd Festival du Cinema Européen, Lille – Audience Award Festival Internacional de Cine de Lanzarote – Audience Award Sapporo International Short Film Festival & Market – Best Child Actress Award (for Dorka Gáspárfalvi and Dorottya Hais) Sapporo International Short Film Festival & Market – Audience Award Chicago International Children’s Film Festival – Best Live Action Short Film Award
'Sing'
'Sing' attention during every minute of her stage time. She understood and embraced the teacher’s character from the very beginning. Once the great festival successes and positive reviews came pouring in, to aim for the Academy Award nomination suddenly seemed like a realistic goal. In order to be nominated for an Oscar in the Best Live Action Short category, the film would have had to win a qualifying award at a competitive film festival or have had its premiere in Los Angeles. ‘Sing’ has already earned numerous awards worldwide, including two Oscar-qualifying prizes. Popular websites (IndieWire, Film Experience, AwardsCircuit, Goldderby, etc.) have not only praised the film in their positive reviews, but have also predicted that it will get the Oscar nod. The Trash Bash, a movie review blog, asserted that “‘Sing’ is a beautiful dance between indie cinema realism and feel-good Hollywood charm”, whilst Kirk Fernwood, an American film fanatic at One Film Fan, wrote that the 25-minute short is “amazingly engaging, undeniably charming, dramatically captivating, very much heartwarming and deeply affecting in its narrative’s execution”, and on Adnan Kundi’s The London Trees site one can read that “it is a visually stunning masterpiece, with beautiful music and a message of being strong and steadfast.” The positive reviews given by these sites shape public opinion and draw attention to films, thus increasing both the audience’s and the industry’s interest which, in turn, can provide a boost in ratings as well as influence the decision-making when it comes to a festival or an award. Deák has several projects running at the moment and he is particularly interested in questions raised by society’s hyper-accelerated progress and in themes such as machine
intelligence and transhumanism, as well as the effect of technology on society and how it shapes the very nature of what people today consider to be the meaning of life. His upcoming sci-fi short, ‘Best Game Ever’, won the pitch forum award of the fourth Friss Hús Budapest International Shortfilm Festival and has received funding from the National Media and Infocommunications Authority’s Hungarian Media Patronage Programme – just like ‘Sing’ did. The film is about artificial intelligence and tells the story of an ordinary guy who has to teach a surveillance camera to pick out criminals without realising that the technology will eventually take over his job, inciting him to trick and defeat the system. Shooting will begin in March. Deák also has a feature film project, a lowbudget mundane sci-fi that takes place in Budapest in the near future and deals with questions of our modern society and of the various effects that technological progress has on our lives. He is currently developing a TV-movie as well, which takes place in 1950s Budapest, the darkest Rákosi era. It is based on a true story and involves many characters in just one apartment. For the Paramount Channel, Deák and his writing team are working on his own dark comedy mini-series where each episode will be just as dynamic as a two- to three-minute-long video clip. The main character, who is in a coma but can see and feel everything around him, cynically narrates what he perceives: his horrible family, the awful doctors and nurses, and all the manifestations of human stupidity, greed and nastiness. The Oscar nomination of ‘Sing’ sheds new light on Kristóf Deák’s running and future projects, and will probably help him find people at the production, organisation and agency levels to assist in and promote his works. Zsófia Herczeg HUNGARIAN FILM MAGAZINE
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'My 20th Century' by Ildikó Enyedi
Hungarian National Film Archive – 60 Years in Motion Celebrating its 60th anniversary this year, the Hungarian National Film Archive preserves more than 70 000 titles. The main goal and the top priority of the Film Archive is to preserve, restore and screen all Hungaryrelated materials. One can find here footage of the Chain Bridge filmed by the Lumière brothers back in 1896 or the early works of great names such as Michael Curtiz, the Korda brothers, André De Toth and Vilmos Zsigmond – remarkable figures of Hollywood who started their careers in Hungary. Moreover, one can find works of many outstanding representatives of Bauhaus and Hungarian animation (such as László Moholy-Nagy, John Halas, George Pal, Félix Kassowitz and Gyula Macskássy) as well as the great Hungarian filmmakers of our age: Miklós Jancsó, István Szabó, Márta Mészáros, Ildikó Enyedi, Zoltán Huszárik, Béla Tarr and Gábor Bódy. As a result of recent reorganization the Hungarian Film Archive now operates under the Hungarian National Film Fund. This is an important change since by cooperation with the Film Lab – that is also part of the Film Fund – the implementation of a long running and comprehensive national film restoration and digitization programme has started. From now on hundreds of Hungarian films will be restored and made available in digital form. As part of the programme, 15 Hungarian film classics are going to be remastered digitally in 4K in a cooperation with the Hungarian Filmlab. Among those 15 we are paying close attention to the works of director Zoltán Fábri, who would be turning 100 this year. The director, who was invited to the competition in Cannes three times, nominated for an Oscar twice and awarded in Venice, Moscow and Berlin more than once, gained world-wide recognition with his movie 'Merry-Go-Round' at the Cannes Film Festival in 1956. François Truffaut, as the critic of Cahiers du Cinéma, named the film as his personal 32
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'The Witness' by Péter Bacsó
'Mephisto' by István Szabó
'Men on the Mountain' by István Szőcs 'The Undesirable' by Michael Curtiz
'Merry Go-Round' by Zoltán Fábri
'Insatiable Bee' by Gyula Macskássy
choice for the Grand Prix and also mentioned Mari Törőcsik as his choice for the Best Actress Award. The rejuvenated films will be distributed both nationally and internationally. In the past couple of years, we presented the restored version of 'The Undesirable' directed by Michael Curtiz in 1914 - the movie hit the big screens of international film events such as the Lumière Festival and the Toronto Silent Film Festival. Two rejuvenated motion pictures were 'Cantata' by Miklós Jancsó
selected for Cannes Classics and had their new international movie theatre debuts in France: the epoch-making 'The Round-Up' by Miklós Jancsó and the ageless classic 'Love' by Károly Makk. The collection of the Archive has been widened with great legacies such as the collection of Studio Balázs Béla the home of experimental films from the 50's (widely known in Europe’s art movie network) and the complete archive of MAHIR, the state-owned Hungarian advertising agency, as well as the great works of the worldfamous animation studio, Pannónia, celebrating its 100th birthday. In addition to collection of books specialized on film the Film Archive has a unique collection of costumes and set designs. As a member of FIAF the Hungarian Film Fund that includes the Archives as well as the Film Lab puts great emohasis on international cooperation. The renewed Film Archive has plans to re-launch a Hungarian Filmmuseum/ Cinématheque and start a new international film festival for classic films in Budapest. As we have learned from our great Béla Balázs:
Tomorrow always starts today. Contact: Hungarian National Film Archive (Magyar Nemzeti Filmarchívum) H-1021 Budapest, Budakeszi út 51/e Tel: (+36) 1 394 1322, (+36) 1 394 1018 info@filmarchiv.hu Director: György Raduly Email: gyorgy.raduly@filmarchiv.hu Phone: (+36) 20 259 49 65
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From Berlin to
Berlin The 67th Berlinale kicks off another great year for Hungarian cinema. ‘On Body and Soul' has been selected for the festival's Official Competition, ‘1945' will feature in its Panorama and ‘Volcano Island' is in the Generation programme.
Master of Invisible Miracles
On Ildikó Enyedi, writerdirector of ‘On Body and Soul' - in Competition at the Berlinale 'Peter and Simon', two eternally competing magicians (and descendants of the biblical figures in a mystical and obscure way), sit in front of a computer to analyse the resurrection that is Peter’s next big trick in ‘Simon, the Magician’, Enyedi's previous feature film. In a very condensed way, this intriguing and bizarre scene shows the basic issue that drives each of Enyedi’s films and defines the essence of her quest: is there any possibility of magic, faith or transcendence in the contemporary world of secularised rationality? Is there anything more than what one can perceive and understand with their own eyes and mind? Is there a force, be it cosmic or terrestrial, even completely human, that defines our lives beyond our own limits ‘My Twentieth Century’
and reach and hence offers the possibility of understanding our minuscule existence as part of a bigger project? Finally, what could be the driving logic behind the incidental? The first issue that strikes the viewer when watching Enyedi’s beautiful, emotional and in a strange way profane films is the problem
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of time, which seems to lie at the heart of the questions previously enumerated. Her films are almost never linear as the stories always jump back and forth between several temporal layers, trying to uncover similarities or parallels that can later be judged as incidental or fateful – depending on the perspective and attitude of the spectator. Her take on transcendence is based on the thesis whereby if something can be bigger than human existence it has to be true or valid across time. One of her main conclusions seems to be that the most durable creations on Earth are myths and symbols – in short: stories – which are able to freely travel across time. And this is the reason why she keeps telling her wonderful, sometimes miraculous tales, which all revolve around their own eternal nature in a self-reflective way. Enyedi speaks of the eternal validity of our myths, be it through the story of the magic hunter of Weber’s romantic opera set in the Budapest of the 1990s (‘The Magic Hunter’, 1994), through the apocrypha competition between Simon and Peter (‘Simon, the Magician’, 1999) or through the eternal choice of lust or love represented by two beautiful twins (‘My Twentieth Century’, 1989). In her world, stories are always and totally present, thus in a strange way fiction (imagination, belief, doubt, etc.) actually creates and defines reality. Though Enyedi is always concerned with what is beyond our apprehension, these films are realist in a strange way: we are confronted with the profane realism of the imaginary, of the fantastic or of the transcendent. This approach has been tagged ‘magical realism’ by many reviewers, using the support of literary references1. However, I believe that this term simplifies these works and obscures the importance of the cinematic means of expression, the use of which Enyedi excels in. The magic of her films originates from the creation of a hugely immersive atmosphere that is based on the carefully composed, usually slowly moving shots that use narrow depth of field, on the atmospheric lighting (Tibor Máthé was her permanent cinematographer) and on the stunning sound design (István Sipos was the sound engineer). In most of her films one can experience such a powerful harmony between the flow of images, the movement of the actors, the noises and the music; a harmony that never becomes disconnected from the actual moment, but is always capable of somehow transcending it and thus making it ungraspable, indescribable. When talking of her visual style one should not forget to mention that Enyedi does not always closely link her images to the narrative itself: the images somehow break free, and instead of representing the elements of the story, they recreate them on another, non-discoursive level.
1
Andrea Pócsik, “Mágikus filmek – Filmmágiák – Rendezőportrék: Enyedi Ildikó”, 'Filmtett', 15 May 2003, http://www.filmtett.ro/cikk/1876/rendezoportrekenyedi-ildiko.
'On Body and Soul'
The frame is a permanent structural rule for Enyedi when constructing her narratives: all of her films end more or less in the same place and time as where they began. But these frames are not only dramaturgical devices that alter the linear story; sometimes – as in the case of ‘My Twentieth Century’ – the last two shots offer the possibility to completely reinterpret everything that was seen beforehand. This doubling or splitting of key moments is mirrored in another crucial narrative strategy: be it the devil and his disciple/victim, two twins, two lovers or two ‘magicians’ (or two co-dreamers, as in this new film), all of Enyedi’s stories are based on couples. Though the members of these odd pairs seem to be bound together, the relationships are affected by the impossibility or unwillingness of their fulfillment, which some consider to be just an accident, whilst others see it as destiny, fate or the result of (or lack of) faith. Enyedi’s specific way of constructing narratives is called 'immanent narrative' by Gábor Gelencsér, who points out that her stories seem to be built – contrary to what is usual – from the inside out. This means that “these narratives are direct, naive and innocent”; they are never linear but mostly circular, instead of symbols they use suggestions, and instead of individual fates they present Fate through individuals2. Regarding this realism, it is also important to point out that Enyedi takes the fantastic very seriously, which is why beyond their sensitivity for the miracle, her films are realist inside a non-realistic story3. Reading all this one might associate Enyedi to Tarkovsky – as has been done by various analysts of Enyedi’s oeuvre –, but her approach seems to be completely the opposite. She is not looking for the possibilities of faith or doubt in humans, but is rather interested in the consequences of faith or of its inexistence, or Gábor Gelencsér, “A fény százada. Enyedi Ildikó: Az én XX. századom”, 'Filmkultúra', No. 5 (1989): 58.
even of the refusal to recognise it in the everyday life of ordinary people. In this sense she is much closer to the style and vision of Kieślowski in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when he removed the overtly political issues from his films in order to speak the language of an internationalised world cinema. However, Enyedi at her best is less explicative (instead of explicitly showing she just makes suggestions and thus leaves more freedom to the interpretation of the viewer) and is somehow more playful, ironic and at times even funny. After ‘My Twentieth Century’ won the Golden Camera at the Cannes Film Festival in 1989, Enyedi was considered to be a great talent of Hungarian cinema and the next female director after Márta Mészáros to be able to produce internationally relevant cinema. The success of this first feature opened up the possibility of international co-productions, which defined both the artistic choices and the production background of both ‘The Magic Hunter’ and ‘Simon, the Magician’. Though the latter is her most accomplished and in many aspects most accessible film, major worldwide recognition failed to appear. Though she was active as a professor and as the director of the Hungarian remake of the television series ‘In Treatment’, she had started to be seen as a hope that never delivered, due to the lack of feature films for more than 15 years. Her latest feature, being premiered in competition in Berlin, might well change that perception, but as there is a whole new generation of already well-known Hungarian filmmakers competing for the same attention (many of them actually mentored by her at the University of Film and Theatre in Budapest), this might be her last shot to enter the scene of global art cinema. However, observing her films and interviews, I am not sure if she really wishes that at all.
2
András Forgách, “A Besorolhatatlan. Enyedi Ildikó”, 'Magyar Filmrendezőportrék', ed. Zalán Vince, Osiris Könyvtár (Budapest: Osiris, 2004), 266–86.
Zsolt Gyenge
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photo by Gábor Valuska
“We All Carry Wounds”
When did you come up with the story? I can tell you exactly when: it was more than ten years ago. I wrote the first draft of the script in 2006. Fortunately, I didn’t force myself to drag it along, so I put it away for a while. When we received funding we continued with the script development. We also found three international co-producers and I was ready to go with a wonderful casting director, but suddenly the Hungarian film support system collapsed: the Hungarian Motion Picture Foundation (MMK) closed, burying the project for a while. The producer András Muhi persuaded me to direct a short film called ‘First Love’, which has done me a lot of good. Then HBO Hungary approached me to direct a few episodes of ‘In Treatment’. I also started to develop a project with the German producer Karl Baumgartner, but unfortunately he died in 2014. Then the new Hungarian National Film Fund was founded and I waited a year to see what would happen before entering the so
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‘On Body and Soul’, the new feature by the acclaimed Hungarian director Ildikó Enyedi, was selected for competition at the 67th Berlinale. After a sixteen-year hiatus, Enyedi returns with a film whose script she practically blurted out. called. Since the new fund didn’t push films favourised by the system, there was no sign of influence in taste or subject at all and eventually several genuine creators were indeed funded, I finally decided to apply with ‘On Body and Soul’. Were there any major changes in the story in ten years? Not at all. In fact, I have never written a script so quickly in my life. The story was practically unleashed in a matter of weeks. It was a real trance. I was very happy to leave that really hard and depressing period of not making films behind me. The first draft was seventy pages long. Not once did I change the main plot or the storyline, but I did make some developments regarding the supporting characters. In doing so I was able to give more layers and depth to the story. I’ll admit, though, that this was very strange for me, because I used to rewrite everything at least eight hundred times.
Can we consider ‘On Body and Soul’ to be selftherapy? I don’t have an answer to that right now. Maybe in twenty years I will be able to analyse myself. Each character in the film has a psychological problem. We all carry wounds. These wounds are gifts of life: it helps us to control our own destiny. These ‘problems’ are psychosomatic signs: they show that there is something wrong in the world where we need to get our bearings. It’s like when your child starts going to school and returns home with a stomach ache, meaning something bad happened. The parameters of our normal life make us ‘problematic’. The existence of psychological problems in the characters means that they have a healthy soul that resists. Life is much more than just obeying social rules, so I didn’t want to create Kaurismäki-like exaggerated characters. There is a true Hollywood saying along the lines of “strengths and vulnerability are the qualities of real film stars”. Look at Humphrey Bogart or Péter Andorai. When we were looking for clothes for our protagonist, Géza Morcsányi, our model was Clint Eastwood. For example, in ‘Gran Torino’, he wears obscure jackets and grey shirts – it first looks like he has given up, but in fact he is still a great gambler. He was a real inspiration for our costume designer Judit Sinkovics. For Alexandra Borbély, who is an absolute beauty in real life, I had to create a significant on-screen transformation, which she greatly succeeded in. Thanks to the costumes we could make her good looks disappear, yet keep her sensitivity. Judit’s costumes added a lot to the dramaturgy of the film. The two main characters don’t like each other in real life but dream the same at night: of being a couple. In the film, the dream sequences are the realistic scenes – both the framing and the visual style – whereas the real-life scenes are a little bit stylised. I was deeply influenced by a film 'On Body and Soul'
called ‘Dreamcopies’ (Álommásolatok) by Miklós Erdély. There’s a scene about Heraclitus in which it claims that when we are awake we live in intercommunity, but when we are asleep we find our own world. I turned this around in ‘On Body and Soul’: in our dreams we live the Jung-type common unconscious where we are really free and not regulated or collective, whereas during the day we are fragmented, insulated and over-controlled. The film also carries social criticism: nobody can avoid everyday corruption. Even the investigator’s hands are 'dirty'. There is real, strong irony between the lines… Probably this is how we live in 'Pannónia'. But yes, the humour, which is also encoded in the love story, was a real risk. I was really worried that it might not work on screen, as it’s not a slapstick comedy. I wanted to stay on the border of killing jokes. When we organised a screening for the crew, our translator who wrote the subtitles was also present. She laughed out loud at the first funny moment and with this she dominated the atmosphere of the event. It was a great relief because you never know if what you think is funny will also be funny for others. One of your most remarkable virtues is that you capture great moments of our everyday lives. So I guess that makes you an observer. Every day you face stories that touch your heart, even on a tram ride. When I was in first year of my directing major, there were no smartphones that you could film with. One piece of exercise for my professor, Zoltán Fábri, was to write an experience-based short story. There was a really boring restaurant called Green Tree – it’s turned to be a bank. I was constantly looking for these kinds of hideouts, since back then it wasn’t so easy to sit alone in a café if you were a girl. If you did, it was basically an open invitation for men to join you. You always had to look straight into the book you were reading. When I went to Paris, I really enjoyed the fact that I could just sit back and look around. But going back to the Green Tree: I sat there and went a bit extreme. I looked at other people and tried to imagine what they were talking about; and that's what I wrote my paper on. Fábri was indignant that I had cheated and bypassed the objective. He claimed that I wasn’t telling anything personal about me, but I was. In fact I had told everything. The fact is that I have an extreme necessity for being alone. The prime moment of my life, for example, is when I sit for five hours at a train station and look at other people. So yes, I am definitely an observer. Géza Csákvári
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The short animation has been selected for the Generation section of the Berlinale. We asked the director Anna Katalin Lovrity about her filmmaking approach and inspirations.
Volcano Island
'Volcano Island' was made as your MOME Anim graduation movie. Where did the idea of the film come from?
Making this decision was a huge responsibility. You work on your film day and night for at least a year, others are involved in the project, you apply for different kinds of support and you know that a lot of people are excited about the final product. I wanted to avoid the common mistake of the artist overthinking something and procrastinating about the decision, so I went to Zánka and gave myself a week to decide what my graduate film would be about. I was sitting in the garden, scrolling my Instagram feed, when I found an old aquarelle painting I had done of a pink tiger. I felt that it could work as a very strong symbol. So the main character came first and then I wrote the story around her. The theme of the movie was always important to me: what does the ingénue archetype feel in stories? What would it be like to follow her point of view? Why should it be so obvious that she wants the same as the more powerful characters? 40
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Your movies are very similar to the cut-out animation style. What is your favourite technique to work with and how did you make 'Volcano Island'? I like the stop-motion technique and I love making collages out of coloured paper. The highly stylised visual world of big colourful patches, as used in 'Volcano Island', goes better with less realistic movement. However, as you can’t animate certain forms of subtlety because it is too complicated to do so, I used digital drawing, creating a hybrid style between drawing and cut-out animation.
Just like Luca Tóth and Réka Bucsi, you also have a unique use of colours and forms. How do you define your own style? How do you choose the colours for your films? I use irregular, angular shapes and saturated colours on my digital canvas. My pictures might seem simple and clean, but since I use patches with no outlines, the forms and shapes have to be more thoughtful, so I spend a lot of time creating the right shots. I putter a lot with the colours in order to make sure that they suggest as much harmony or drama as the scene requires. Your movie 'Passionpanther' also takes place in the jungle and tells a story of an absurd love affair. Am I right to assume that complex relationships and the jungle as a location are close to you?
The nearly 3-minute-long 'Passionpanther' grew from a short school project. It was a great pre-study for 'Volcano Island', so I was able to confidently handle the jungle’s flora and fauna in my graduation film. 'Volcano Island' has a very emphatic sound design, done by Péter Benjámin Lukács (who also made the sound design for Réka Bucsi’s 'LOVE' and Luca Tóth’s 'Superbia'). Tell me, how did you make the soundtrack? What was the conception and what sounds did you use? As there is no shooting in animation, there are no recorded sounds either, so the sound designer has to create the atmosphere and sounds of a non-existent world in a sound studio. A bad choice, like a funny or stereotypical sound, can mess up the viewer’s previously developed feelings. The same is true with music (put together by Bálint Szabó). It’s important to work with people whom I fully trust, because the soundtrack also creatively builds the movie’s universe. How did you become interested in animation? Were you touched or influenced by a specific movie or artist? I’ve never been a cartoon fanatic and we didn’t even have a TV at home, which always made me sad. I read a lot, loved art and watched a lot of sad movies in Cirko-Gejzír [a Hungarian art cinema - ed.]. What I like about animation is that I can make films where I control every part of the image and everything looks just like I had dreamed, so it promises absolute creative freedom. When I applied to MOME, I had no idea how much self-discipline and
Anna Katalin Lovrity, born in 1990, is a Hungarian independent animation filmmaker. From 2010 to 2016 she attended MOME (MoholyNagy University of Art and Design Budapest), in the animation department, where her graduation film was 'Volcano Island'. She is currently attending the Animation Sans Frontières (ASF), the European animation production workshop, where she is preparing her next movie. Gerenation Screenings @ EFM 12.02. 14:00 CinemaxX 3 14.02. 15:30 18.02. 09:30
Filmtheater am Friedrichshain
A female tiger’s colour has changed, which attracts the attention of an old, dominant white tiger. The young naive tigress is not able to handle the approach of the other. Two kinds of nature are represented by the main characters. The male tiger is as stable and strong as a rock, but the female character represents the hidden, volcanic energies under the surface. At the beginning of the story the tigress is not aware of her deep connection to the island and to nature. However, by the end, she finally discovers her great, elementary force.
patience I would need in this industry. For me, reading is the most inspiring activity, even when I work on a film, but the movies by Michael Gondry, Hayao Miyazaki and Ulrich Seidl have also had a great impact on me. There is a MOME graduation movie in a prestigious international film festival again. What do you think the secret of MOME animation’s success is? There is a very family-like atmosphere at the Master’s programme. I loved the consulting, and we’ve received a lot of support, both professionally and personally. Our consultants and instructors (Tibor Bánóczki, Júlia Farkas and Judit Czakó) treat us like partners and encourage us to find our own paths as animation directors. They encourage us to experiment with new ways of storytelling, visuals and techniques. I think this kind of courage is what festivals appreciate the most. But it would be misleading if directors made films based on a certain recipe only, to achieve festival success rather than trying to create their own visions. Do you have plans for your next film? I’ve already started to work on a new movie, and it won’t take place in the jungle this time. It is about a relationship between a mother and her adult daughter. Zsófia Herczeg
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photo by Gábor Valuska
It’s the Sound that Makes it Real
Interview with Péter Benjámin Lukács sound designer, producer Three Hungarian titles will feature this year at the 67th Berlinale: ‘On Body and Soul’, ‘1945’ and ‘Volcano Island’. They are quite different in many ways, but they have one clear connection: Péter Benjámin Lukács, the young and talented sound engineer who, by the way, doesn’t like the job title. One of the most promising and busy men in his field of work, Péter has a rich and colourful portfolio: animated short films, experimental pieces, sketch films, features and documentaries are already tied to his name, and he’s still looking for new territories to discover. Péter’s interest in sound started in primary school and stayed with him all the way through to the Film Department at ELTE University. “The most important film in my life at the time was ‘Terminator 2’, and it’s still one of my favourites. As the years passed I got more and more involved in film, but it was strange that no one really cared about teaching sound. It started to interest me on a theoretical level, and when we had to shoot a graduation short at university I was the only one who was interested in it.” After finishing university and with some experience under his belt, Péter applied for a year-long HAESF (Hungarian American Enterprise Scholarship Funds) in a small studio in New York. “I got some experience in postproduction and shooting, just enough to learn the basics. When I came back I started working with Rudolf Várhegyi, an outsider just like me. Most people start out as engineers and then move on to sound before starting to work on films. That process has changed in recent years, and we are trying to forget the title of ‘sound engineer’ because most people are not at all engineers.”
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'Superbia'
mostly live recordings of Hungarian bands. He spent 10 days working on '1945' (premiering in the Panorama selection), and his next fieldwork will be the new feature from Gábor Reisz ('For Some Inexplicable Reason') called 'Bad Poems'. “Tamás Zányi said that working on a shoot is like joining the army. Everyone has to be ready and prepared at 6 in the morning. I fully respect the work of sound technicians who work on shoots; it’s a very hard job, but I find postproduction more interesting.”
Although there is a ‘sound master’ class at the SZFE (University of Theatre and Film Arts), Péter did not want to learn it at school. Instead he started out with odd jobs, being recommended by friends, and then worked his way up. “Learning basic engineering skills is useful in terms of technical details, but it doesn’t teach you the artistic side of things. I got my first jobs because directors recommended me to each other. At first a friend introduced me to the animation director Balázs Turay, who got me involved in MOME Anim, and Péter Fancsikai, who introduced me to Krétakör, a Hungarian contemporary theatre group. I was working with Marcell Rév when he asked me to help out in the graduation shorts of SZFE. That’s how I got to know György Mór Kárpáti, Gábor Reisz and Bálint Szimler. That’s how it all started.”
After months of hard work, Péter has just finished the sound of his first feature, which was supported by the Hungarian Film Fund. ‘On Body and Soul’, by Ildikó Enyedi, is competing for the Golden Bear this year. “There are some similarities in the films that I worked on that were selected for the festival. Both ‘On Body and Soul’ and 'Volcano Island' (the animated short film by Anna Katalin Lovrity, premiering in Generations) have a similar, calm pace, and both are about relationships between men and women. When the budget allows me, I like to divide the tasks up between a couple of people, which was possible in Ildikó Enyedi’s film. But I can’t really do that in an animation short because it’s always a complex job and I feel like I have to work on every segment in order to like the final result.”
At the same time as working in graduation films, plays and animated shorts, Péter started collaborating with animation director Réka Bucsi on her short film ‘Symphony No. 42’. This turned out to be an important milestone in Péter’s career. “I didn’t just work on the sound, I also helped out during the whole creative process. We had time to figure it out properly, and Réka and I had the same vision and concept of how the film should work.” Since then they created 'Love' together, which was in competition at the Berlinale Shorts last year, just as ‘Symphony No. 42’ had been in 2014.
Péter’s showreel is already diverse, but there are some genres that he would like to try out in the future. “Working on a sci-fi movie would be very exciting. In fiction features, I think sci-fis have the most interesting sound design, and they’re starting to have the same effects as animated films. Unreal and impossible things happen in a supposedly real world, which makes it similar to animation. Something that is visually accurate happens, but it’s the sound that makes it real for the viewers. In both genres you have to invent the world that surrounds the characters.”
Péter also contributed from the very beginning to the making of Luca Tóth’s ‘Superbia’, where for the first time he was credited as a producer. “I started producing the same way I started sound engineering – I didn’t work as an intern besides a big-time producer, it just happened. I wanted to work with Gábor Osváth, who helped a lot on the film. I examined how he worked and tried to learn along the way. I was interested and wanted to comment on it, as well as help the films. I trust my taste, which is why I wanted to try my luck in producing.” Péter hasn’t worked as a full-time technician on shootings since 2015, when he worked on 'Balaton Method', a sketch film made of 17 video clips of
As for role models, Péter respects the work of old-time geniuses, and one in particular from his home country. “Amongst my favourites there’s Ben Burtt and Walter Murch, who was one of the revolutionaries of New Hollywood, and from home it would have to be Tamás Zányi, who is still the best in the field. No one seems to be able to catch up to his genius. The sound world that they created in ‘Son of Saul’ is still outstanding, on an international level too. Besides these people, it always depends on the films and the directors. For good sound, there always needs to be a visionary director who figures it all out in their mind and knows how to connect all the creative energies.” Janka Pozsonyi
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Against All Odds
The rave reviews of ‘Strangled’
Árpád Sopsits’ latest feature took the Hungarian cinema by storm with remarkable box office results and left nothing but great reviews in its wake; ‘Strangled’ is now on its way to conquer the international audience as well. A psychotic killer is on the prowl, slaughtering young women while an innocent man is wrongly accused and sentenced for crimes he could never have committed. A determined detective arrives on the scene and soon becomes obsessed with the case, all the while under pressure from the prosecutor to see a man hang. Stuck in the suffocating social, political and psychological world of socialist Hungary, we soon find ourselves entangled in 'Strangled'
'Strangled' a web of intricate conspiracy and disturbing drama. Based on the real-life events that occurred in the provincial Hungary of the 1960s, Árpád Sopsits’ dark tale was not exactly the safest bet to make: it received the restrictive 18+ rating, has a two-hour-long running time, tells the story of atrocious murders that shocked the small Hungarian town of Martfű and was released in cinemas at the same time as two highly anticipated American blockbusters, ‘Doctor Strange’ and ‘Arrival’, only to mention a few films that were competing for the audience’s attention. Nevertheless, after its domestic premiere on 10 November 2016, both the industry and the audience had nothing but elated and delighted words to say about the film, which was even called the “best Hungarian film of the year” by one of Hungary’s most popular internet portals, Index.hu. Obviously it didn’t hurt that Cineuropa’s journalist Fabien Lemercier had the following to say about the film after its world premiere at the Warsaw Film Festival in October: “Brilliantly directed, most notably thanks to the remarkable work of director of photography Gábor Szabó, with its striking nocturnal scenes and an excellent reconstruction of the times in which these events took place. ‘Strangled’ is a thriller not without formal qualities and intensity, built on a screenplay that moves forward relatively astutely along three trajectories (those of the innocent man, the investigation and the killer).” After its domestic release, the movie was already on its way abroad. ‘Strangled’ was on show at the Cairo International Film Festival and will likely have a successful march on the international festival circuit. That, we believe, is a safe bet to make. Veronika Jakab
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Here’s what the Critics say “There’s an intriguing sense of time and place here; events play out in a small place in an ostensibly simpler time, perhaps, but the political crosswinds are strongly felt and complex. Technical credits are solid in this historical drama. It’s the kind of subject matter which has been appropriated for the small screen of late, but there’s a scope and ambition here which justifies a big-screen release domestically.” – Screendaily.com
Market Screening @ EFM 12.02. 09:00 CinemaxX 19
“Based on actual events, Hungarian director Arpád Sopsits has been turning heads with his dark crime thriller ‘Strangled’.” – Screenanarchy.com “A pure genre film of international quality but with an atmosphere and environment that remains quintessentially Hungarian.” - Smokingbarrels.com “There is no explanation for the evil shown by a serial killer but there is for every other aspect of his character and that’s much more terrifying. ‘Strangled’ is the best Hungarian film of the year.” - Index.hu “Sopsits’ horror story is an inarguable success and reflects a wealth of professional expertise. Fear and film directing at its highest level.” - Heti Válasz “This genre sits particularly well with Sopsits and, assisted by the cinematographer Gábor Szabó, he manages to create a very strong, almost noir effect.” - Filmkultura.hu “After a handful of auteur films, Sopsits has eventually created his first authentic genre movie and appears to have made the most successful Hungarian crime movie to date.” - Vox.hu “We haven’t seen such a good Hungarian film in a very long time.” - Nyugat.hu “… above and beyond excellent storytelling and depiction of an era, the final dramatic twist takes a ‘simple’ detective story and turns it into a crime movie.” - Filmtett
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A plastic drama with real-life situations Hungary’s past is replete with unprocessed trauma. The director of ‘Moscow Square’ (Moszkva tér, 2001), the cult film about the historical events in 1989, now guides the audience back to 1945. In the presence of Soviet soldiers, the people of a little village are getting prepared for the wedding of the notary’s son, all the while trying to ignore the fact that they deported a significant part of the town’s Jewish community the previous year. In Zurich airport we spoke about historical taboos and the production process with the film’s director, Ferenc Török, just before he took off to Miami to attend the world premiere of '1945'. How do you feel about the world premiere? I’m a little nervous because my flight has been delayed and it’s not even sure I'll make it to the opening (he says, laughing). And I’ve got '1945'
Ferenc Török
a more than 10-hour-long flight ahead of me. Apart from that, it’s a great honour to be able to show this film for the first time in the States: there are so many people with European roots living in America whose family will also have gone through the horrors of the world war, like in Hungary. The European premiere will be in Berlin, later followed by the Hungarian release in April. The film is set in '1945' in a little village in the foothills. How did you choose this topic? I’ve been interested in this topic for 10 years now, ever since I read Gábor T. Szántó’s novel, which the film underlies. I was really interested in the time just after the war and just before the introduction of nationalisation and Communism, when for a moment there was an inkling of the possibility of democratic transition. Things could even have taken a turn for the better. Fascism was over but Communism had not yet begun; we tried to capture the atmosphere of those few years in this film. This is a period in Hungarian history that is not overly represented either in literature or in film. Instead, people focus on the Second World War itself or on the dictatorship of the 1950s, with these few intermediate years earlier. I wanted to present a social tableau that would portray life in Hungary just after the war. How did the screenplay come about? Gábor T. Szántó’s story is originally a 10-page novel. Together we first developed a dramaturgy similar to the Greek tragedies, which are built on the unities of action, time and place. We created new characters and strengthened the whole
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'1945'
with dry dialogue. This is how the text became a screenplay over the years. What I like most about the novel is how the plot, in the relatively short amount of time – three or four hours –, presents situations with no dialogue and in a balladic way, which is something that we definitely wanted to keep. Creators are also usually personally connected with their topics. What’s your story? This is a tragic time in history with which everyone is connected in some way or another. I wasn’t led by a personal, family story though; this is rather fiction, unlike ‘Moscow Square’. If I had to say something about my connection it would be what grasped me. Szántó’s novel took a completely different take on the given historical situation than anything I had ever read before. I think about the motive of new beginnings and how society must overcome trauma, start a new journey, confront the past and undertake a new life. Could you tell us a little bit about the shooting? We had a fantastic cast and a relatively smooth shooting. It was the first time I worked with Market Screening @ EFM 12.02.
11:10
CinemaxX 19
Panorama Screenings @ Berlinale 12.02. 14.02. 15.02. 16.02. 17.02.
20:15 19:30 20:00 22:45 20:15
CineStar 3 Zoo Palast 2 CinemaxX 7 CineStar 3 Cubix 7 & 8
Elemér Ragályi, the cameraman, whom I deeply respect. I have known him personally for a while now and consider him to be my maestro. I asked him to work on the film, among other things because he went through of all this when he was five and living in a little village. That’s the kind of personal motive that I was talking about before; it is real for him. He doesn’t only remember what an old soccer ball used to look like, for example, but he also remembers the atmosphere people lived in in rural Hungary. It’s about that summer, when the war ended. We used to be taught that that was the liberation itself, and we even celebrated it on the fourth of April each year. How can young people these days, 15-20 year olds, connect with this topic through your film? What kind of reception are you expecting from them? I usually say that we should trust youth. ‘1945’ is not necessarily about adolescents, but about the more mature and nuanced-thinking audience. They’re likely to feel more empathy for the film itself. Together with that, I think that the period of history in my film will be more easily understandable than, let’s say, in dry textbooks. This is a plastic drama that confronts the audience with real-life situations. Based on the invitations to various festivals, I’m hoping that it will attract a lot of people and that they will be touched by it. I trust that the Hungarian audience will be mature enough for the critical interpretation of this era. This moment in history hasn’t yet been shown from this approach. Ágnes Gurubi
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Coming Soon Upcoming films: various genres and authors, long-awaited first features and comebacks. This is where you can learn about all of them. FESTIVALS: marta.benyei@filmalap.hu, kati.vajda@filmalap.hu INTERNATIONAL SALES: klaudia.androsovits@filmalap.hu
Coming Soon AURORA BOREALIS - Northern Light / Aurora Borealis - Északi fény (Hu) Drama / Post-Production
DIRECTED BY MÁRTA MÉSZÁROS PRODUCED BY ISTVÁN MAJOR, GÜL TOGAY / FILMTEAM “If you want to tell the truth, honesty is not enough.” Living in Vienna, Olga realises that there are secrets and lies in her family past, and she will not be able to put her own life in order until she works out the truth of what really happened. After returning to Hungary, her elderly mother did everything in her power to keep the past a secret from her daughter and lied to her for years. When her mother falls into a coma, however, Olga finds a mysterious photograph and starts to search for the truth. Auteur of 'Adoption' (Golden Bear, Berlinale 1975), 'Nine Months' (Prix FIPRESCI, Cannes 1977) and 'Diary for my Children' (Grand Prix Special du Jury, Cannes 1984), Márta Mészáros has, once again, directed a film that examines a social taboo, this time exploring the story of children fathered by occupying Russian soldiers. An international cast includes iconoclastic Mari Törőcsik, who has collected awards for Best Actress in Cannes, Chicago, Karlovy Vary and Monte Carlo, alongside Ildikó Tóth, Franciska Törőcsik, Antonio de la Torre, Hary Prinz and Lesław Żurek.
BEING SOLOMON / Salamon király legendája (Hu/Il) Animation - Family / Post-Production
DIRECTED BY ALBERT HANAN KAMINSKI PRODUCED BY RÉKA TEMPLE / CINEMON STUDIO & EDEN PRODUCTIONS In this animation feature, the ancient legends of King Solomon are humorously adapted for children with a contemporary and fresh overtone. The battles between the young Solomon and Asmodeus, the King of Evil, reveal the tension between a tyrannical thirst for power and humble humanity. In the second part of this film and via the quest for a magical creature, an initiation through power is replaced by a search for love. Princess Nama, the beautiful daughter of Salim, King of Petra, witnesses Solomon’s wisdom and kindness and falls in love with him, unaware of his royal status. The cleansing of the infection Asmodeus has spread over Jerusalem and the regaining of order in the kingdom, thanks to the cooperation of all humans and animals, mean a glorified victory of good over evil and, above all, the wedding between Solomon and Princess Nama, a hopeful ending that celebrates the crossing of borders between religions, nations and identities.
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Coming Soon BUDAPEST NOIR (Hu) Crime - Thriller / Post-Production
DIRECTED BY ÉVA GÁRDOS PRODUCED BY ILDIKÓ KEMÉNY / PIONEER PICTURES Set in the politically troubled autumn of 1936, this story follows Zsigmond Gordon, a world-weary reporter asking unwanted questions about the seemingly unimportant murder of a young prostitute found beaten to death and dumped in a courtyard. While supposedly covering the funeral of fascist-leaning, real-life Hungarian prime minister Gyula Gömbös, Gordon’s investigation leads him deep into the city’s dark underbelly – a shady world of pornographers, fixers, all-night “smokers”, boxing rings, seedy brothels, powerful crime syndicates and communist cells – all the way to the highest echelons of power, where one of Hungary’s most influential business figures plans to make a fortune through his political ties to Germany’s leadership – as long as he can somehow keep secret the fact that he is of Jewish heritage. Originally published in 2008, the novel 'Budapest Noir' proved popular with both the public and critics and became an instant bestseller, sparking several sequels and translations into numerous languages around the world.
BRAZILS / Brazilok (Hu) Comedy - Family / Completed
DIRECTED BY CSABA M. KISS, GÁBOR ROHONYI PRODUCED BY MÓNIKA MÉCS / M&M FILM An ethno-tale with humour and tears. Chaos erupts among the Gypsy population of the town of Acsa when the mayor, urged by the new young priest of the village, announces that this year the Gypsy football team called 'Brazils' can also take part in the football championship of the village. And thanks to a Brazilian millionaire originally from Acsa, the winning team will be invited to Rio de Janeiro. The championship begins. Events, emotions and anger take unpredictable directions. Those who win in the end were not supposed to be the winners, and those who find love were not supposed to fall in love with each other.
THE BUTCHER, THE WHORE AND THE ONE-EYED MAN / A hentes, a kurva és a félszemu ´´ (Hu) Crime / Post-Production
DIRECTED BY JÁNOS SZÁSZ PRODUCED BY ISTVÁN BODZSÁR / UNIO FILM 1925 saw a terrible scandal shake the city of Budapest. Ferenc Kudelka was slaughtered in his own abattoir, cut up, bundled into suitcases and carried through the city streets to be eventually dumped into the Danube. The gruesome crime is committed by a former gendarme by the name of Gusztáv Léderer and his ex-prostitute wife Mária Fekete, in cold blood but in an atrociously amateur fashion. Before the murder, Kudelka falls passionately in love with the wife of the former officer, with the full knowledge and assistance of her husband: he is able to spend hours of pleasure with the man’s wife in return for a small fee. Driven by greed, the Léderer couple – after two failed attempts – eventually succeeds in killing Ferenc Kudelka. The film shows the perilous decline of three individuals as they are sucked into a world of sinful existence. It is the story of a wild and voracious love triangle. Related with brutal truth and raw realism, it tells a tale of meat, amour and maniacal murder.
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Coming Soon GENESIS (Hu)
Drama / Post-Production DIRECTED BY ÁRPÁD BOGDÁN PRODUCED BY ANDREA TASCHLER / MIRAGE FILM & GÁBOR FERENCZY / FOCUS-FOX The three stories within 'Genesis' explore the notion of family: a woman in her late thirties rediscovers the faith she lost as a child; a mother goes to extreme lengths to ensure that her daughter is saved from the fate she was forced to endure; a Roma boy’s family is killed and the perfect world of his childhood is destroyed. All three stories are linked together by coincidence, and these meetings change the lives of the characters.
GYPSY IN SPACE / Lajkó cigány az ´u´ rben (Hu) Comedy / Post-Production
DIRECTED BY BALÁZS LENGYEL PRODUCED BY FERENC PUSZTAI / KMH FILM This black comedy allows us to learn that the first living being to go to space was not actually a dog called Lajka but a Hungarian crop sprayer by the name of Lajkó. We discover that, in early 1957, the Soviet Union decides to give Hungary the honour of providing the first cosmonaut to orbit in space. The most suitable candidate turns out to be none other than Lajos Serbán, known to all as Lajkó, whose life as a pilot reflects his lifelong attraction to the stars and the unexplored infinity of space. When he is eventually selected for this daring mission, he has little notion of the fact that it is not by chance that his dreams are to come true…
HIS MASTER’S VOICE / Az Úr hangja (Hu/Ca) Sci-fi / Post-Production
DIRECTED BY GYÖRGY PÁLFI PRODUCED BY FERENC PUSZTAI / KMH FILM & QUIET REVOLUTION PICTURES Based on the Stanisław Lem novel of the same name, 'His Master’s Voice' tells the story of a thirty-something Hungarian journalist who has never met his father who defected to the United States in the seventies and disappeared. However, himself on the brink of founding a family, he decides to travel to the States to find his father. As a scientist, the latter worked in a research group which examined ‘voices’ from space in search of evidence of extraterrestrial intelligent life. This new film by director Pálfi ('Hukkle', 'Taxidermia', 'Free Fall') aims to address the question of whether we are alone in the world, at the level of both the universe and the individual.
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Coming Soon KINCSEM - Bet on Revenge (Hu) Romance-Adventure-Family / Completed DIRECTED BY GÁBOR HERENDI PRODUCED BY TAMÁS HUTLASSA / CAFÉ FILM Hungary in the mid-1800s – an epic romantic drama set against the aftermath of the Hungarian Revolution and the reprisals of the Austrian Habsburgs. As defeated Hungarians are placed under martial law, two families’ lives will become intertwined by one of the world’s greatest race horses – Kincsem. Hungarian aristocrat and supreme horse trainer Sándor Blaskovich is killed when his former friend, Austrian officer Otto von Oettingen, is sent to arrest him for treason. Von Oettingen takes over the Blaskovich castle with his young daughter Klara, while Sándor Blaskovich’s orphaned son Ernő is consigned to a poor labourer’s cottage. Ernő cannot forgive either von Oettingen or the Emperor for taking his father’s life, land and honour. Years later, he goes on to purchase and train the magnificent Kincsem, which he believes will be his ticket to regaining the family home. The horse grows into a prized and unbeatable champion, but is wild and unruly – as is the woman who also shows a keen interest in Kincsem as well as in Ernő – Klara von Oettingen.
OUT (Sk/Cz/Hu)
Drama / Post-Production DIRECTED BY GYÖRGY KRISTÓF CO-PRODUCED BY FERENC PUSZTAI / KMH FILM The power plant has closed down and unemployment now dominates in an east Slovakian town. Ágoston, a tall family man in his fifties, sets off to wander through Eastern Europe in the desperate hope of finding a job and fulfilling his dream of catching a big fish. When he reaches the Baltics, he finds himself with nothing but sea, salt and wind at his back. His jeopardous journey spins him deeper and deeper into a blizzard of bizarre events as he meets a tall friendly woman, a Russian friend with unfriendly intensions and a sad, earless and stuffed rabbit. Waves spread over the sand and flow slowly back. A new wave arrives to sweep away the previous one. This is where the sea ends but by no means where it begins.
PAPPA PIA (Hu)
Musical-Comedy / Post-Production DIRECTED BY GÁBOR CSUPÓ PRODUCED BY ATTILA TŐZSÉR / FOCUS-FOX Papi is the world’s dodgiest pensioner, who only has a winning smile to offer by way of payment. With nowhere to live, he sets up his home in a boathouse on the banks of the Danube. No sooner is he settled than Wizy, his neighbour and owner of a flashy nightclub, sets his sights on Papi’s home in order to turn it into a stunning nightspot. Far from being phased, but with little idea of what to do, the old fella seeks assistance from his grandson Tomi. The kid is a little less dodgy than his grandpa but with plenty more charm and no issue to call on his mates for help. This gang of hapless hopefuls takes on the might of Wizy and his thugs and attempt the impossible: to temporarily transform the boathouse into a ruin pub to collect the cash they need to survive. Their hopes are large but their chances are little – but in a romantic comedy like this one, where everyone is a musician and/or in love, anything can happen. And at least it gives us the chance to listen to a whole stack of oldies but goodies…
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Coming Soon THE PERFECT KILLER / A tökéletes gyilkos (Hu) Crime - Thriller / Completed
DIRECTED BY JÓZSEF PACSKOVSZKY PRODUCED BY JENŐ HÁBERMANN / FILMART A depressed murder detective works on a strange case. He sets out to catch his daughter’s killer, who also happens to be her former best friend. The fugitive, a pretty girl in her early twenties, knocks on his door and asks him to hide her… It only takes a little while for them to realise that they are both part of a much larger game.
PICTURESQUE EPOCHS / Festo ´´ i korszakok (Hu) Documentary / Completed
DIRECTED BY PÉTER FORGÁCS PRODUCED BY LÁSZLÓ KÁNTOR / FEST-FILM & MÁTRIX FILM Péter Forgács is an internationally renowned film director and media artist whose latest work is a time travel that spans 200 years of Hungarian history. The aspects of its complex, interweaving art and existence, along with the substantive comments of art historian Géza Perneczky, conduct us through different ages and concepts of painting. The monumental saga, which merges fine arts and filmmaking as well as private and public life, is the story of four generations throughout different epochs of Hungarian artistic life. The protagonist of 'Picturesque Epochs' is Mária Gánóczy (1927-), a painter and film aficionado who comes from a family of female artists as far back as her great-grandmothers. She brought up nine children with her husband József Breznay (1916-2012), a fellow painter. Gánóczy’s films and paintings immortalised the chequered history of Central Europe. Forgács’s works see representative personal and historical layering by using the most varying film tools and textures: paintings, faded photos, 8-mm film footage, newsreels, handwritten documents and radio archives, as well as present-day HD interview recordings. 'Picturesque Epochs' combines art, family papers and the distinctive features and iconic events of different eras in this intimate yet extensive saga.
SINISTER SHADOW / Rossz árnyék (Hu) Drama / Post-Production
DIRECTED BY ANDRÁS JELES PRODUCED BY ANDRÁS MUHI, GÁBOR FERENCZY / FOCUS-FOX The leading characters in this symbolic film are a young man with special abilities and his restorer father. The central motif is an emblematic work, The Ambassadors, painted by the Renaissance artist Hans Holbein the Younger, of which the restorer is commissioned by his friend to produce a perfect replica. The masterpiece slowly reveals its hidden messages as we learn that reproducing an artwork of such astounding quality is not only the ultimate test of his painterly ability but also a journey of discovery that sheds a bright light on his life to date and presents us with a terrifying question.
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Coming Soon SUPERFLUOUS MAN / Felesleges ember (Hu/De) Drama / Post-Production
DIRECTED BY KORNÉL MUNDRUCZÓ PRODUCED BY VIKTÓRIA PETRÁNYI / PROTON CINEMA & THE MATCH FACTORY, FILMPARTNERS Festival/sales: The Match Factory info@matchfactory.de The location of Kornél Mundruczó’s seventh feature film is the Europe of tomorrow. The story is about a 17-yearold boy, Ariel, who attempts to illegally cross the border into Hungary. Unfortunately, his endeavours to escape are unsuccessful. Ariel is hit by the bullet of a police officer. As a result of his wound, the boy is endowed with a unique ability: to levitate – just like an angel. The following day at the refugee camp, a disillusioned, cynical doctor, Stern, examines the boy. Upon realising his ability, Stern decides to smuggle the refugee out of the secured camp in order to exploit this gift to his own advantage. In the meantime, however, the camp’s director is on their trail. Henceforth, Stern and the boy become fugitives from justice. As they move from place to place, Stern introduces the boy to various individuals, hoping to reap significant profits. But Ariel’s ultimate emblem of freedom – his ability to fly – makes him a slave in a world where miracles can be exchanged for small change. Stern quickly realises that his own selfishness has made him forget the real reason he became a doctor in the first place: to help fellow human beings. From this point on, all he wants is to save the boy from the grip of the law. Though he, too, becomes an outlaw, the boy restores in him the most important lost treasure: his faith.
TROUPERS / Vándorszínészek (Hu) Drama / Post-Production
DIRECTED BY PÁL SÁNDOR PRODUCED BY PÁL SÁNDOR / FILMSTREET Set in the early 1800s and based on the diary of a prompter, this period road movie is laced with humour and irony. Come snow, frost or scorching heat, a ragtag band of comedians trudge along highways and byways, hoping to make it to the capital to perform in a real theatre in front of a sophisticated audience. Love, friendship, betrayal and reconciliation – anything is possible on this inner and outer journey aback a rickety round-top wagon.
THE WHISKY ROBBER / A Viszkis (Hu) Crime / Post-Production
DIRECTED BY NIMRÓD ANTAL PRODUCED BY TAMÁS HUTLASSA / CAFÉ FILM Between 1993 and 1999, one man robbed 29 financial institutions in Budapest. Banks, post offices and even travel agencies fell victim to his crime spree. The police had no leads and no hope of finding him during his sixyear stint. The only clue left behind at the crime scenes was the distinct aroma of whisky. Thus, the media named him the ‘whisky robber’. Never physically harming anyone, many began to follow his escapades through the media and soon started to root for him. His capture would only bring more intrigue. A Transylvanian immigrant, named Attila Ambrus, who also happened to be a goalie for one of the city’s largest hockey teams, was eventually identified as the perpetrator. The police had finally captured him... or so they thought.
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New Films from
Hungary Flip through the latest titles in every genre and learn about the cast, crew and contacts.
Feature Film
1945
#atfirstsight (#sohavégetneméro ´´ s)
91 min, 2017
90 min, 2016
Director: Ferenc Török Main cast: Péter Rudolf, Bence Tasnádi, Tamás Szabó Kimmel, Dóra Sztarenki, Ági Szirtes, József Szarvas, Eszter Nagy-Kálózy, Iván Angelus, Marcell Nagy, István Znamenák, Sándor Terhes Producers: Iván Angelusz, Péter Reich Production company: Katapult Film Festivals: kati.vajda@filmalap.hu, marta.benyei@filmalap.hu Sales: klaudia.androsovits@filmalap.hu
Director: Dániel Tiszeker Main cast: András Ötvös, Ákos Orosz, Dóra Sztarenki, Petra Hartai, Blanka Mészáros Producer: Balázs Lévai Production company: Színfolt Film Festivals, sales: levailexikon@gmail.com
On a sweltering August day in Hungary in 1945, villagers prepare for the wedding of the town clerk's son. Meanwhile, two strangers arrive at the village train station with mysterious boxes labelled "fragrances". The villagers are afraid that survivors will return, posing a threat to the properties and possessions they acquired during the war. Born in Budapest in 1971, director-screenwriter Ferenc Török is a prominent figure of the new generation of Hungarian filmmakers who are said to have appeared on the scene in 2000. After graduating from the Academy of Drama and Film and directing a number of successful shorts, Török made his first feature, the emblematic Moscow Square (Moszkva tér, 2001), which became one of the most important cult films after the regime change. Festivals and awards: 2017 - Miami Jewish Film Festival – Audience Award Supported by the Hungarian National Film Fund EFM screening 12 Feb 11:10 CinemaxX 19 Panorama screenings 12 Feb 20:15 CineStar 3 14 Feb 19:30 Zoo Palast 2 15 Feb 20:00 CinemaxX 7 16 Feb 22:45 CineStar 3 17 Feb 20:15 Cubix 7 & 8
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This is an anthology film inspired by the lyrics of Hungary’s most popular contemporary music band, Wellhello. The title means ‘never-ending’, which is a reference to the illusion of youth and love. The film tells six individual stories about the love and relationships of millennials in five different Hungarian cities. Each part has its special rules and unique way of visual storytelling. The cast consists of the new generation of young Hungarian theatre actors, and for most of them this is their big-screen debut. Dániel Tiszeker started his career as assistant director and casting director after studying film history. After three documentaries, this is his first feature film.
Feature Film
THE CARER (Jutalomjáték)
THE CITIZEN (Az állampolgár)
89 min, 2016
110 min, 2016
Director: János Edelényi Cast: Brian Cox, Coco König, Emilia Fox, Anna Chancellor, Roger Moore Producers: József Berger, Charlotte Wontner, Steve Bowden Production companies: Mythberg Films, Hopscotch Films, Vita Nova Films Festivals: marta.benyei@filmalap.hu, kati.vajda@filmalap.hu Sales: miira@yellowaffair.com
Director: Roland Vranik Main cast: Dr. Marcelo Cake-Baly, Ági Máhr, Arghavan Shekari Producers: Károly Fehér, Csaba Tóth Production company: Popfilm Festivals: kati.vajda@filmalap.hu, marta.benyei@filmalap.hu Sales: klaudia.androsovits@filmalap.hu
Theatrical legend Sir Michael Gifford is terminally ill. He’s also foul-mouthed and impossible to be around. Into his fraught household comes Hungarian immigrant girl Dorottya to act as yet another badly treated caregiver - but she also brings with her a secret, and through it a second chance at life for Sir Michael. After graduating from the Academy of Drama and Film in Budapest both as a director and as a DOP, János Edelényi joined Hungarian television. His work with György Fehér on ‘Richard II’, ‘Richard III’ and ‘Volpone’ was seen as groundbreaking and the pair were twice awarded the Grand Prize, the Prize For Best Photography and the Best TV Adaptation Prize. In 2009, he co-wrote and directed the multi-award winning ‘Prima Primavera’, a Hungarian-Bulgarian-Dutch-UK feature. Festivals and awards: 2016 - Palm Springs International Film Festival - Best of the Fest selection 2016 - Edinburgh International Film Festival - Best of the Fest selection 2016 - Rovinj ISFMF - Crystal Pine Main Award for Best Original Score to Attila Pacsay
Wilson is a 57-year-old African refugee who wants to become Hungarian but repeatedly fails the citizenship test. He falls in love with his tutor, Mari, who preps him for his next exam. Their feelings are mutual; Mari leaves her family and moves in with Wilson. His life seems to be on track; he might finally become a Hungarian citizen and settle down. Meanwhile, an illegal immigrant appears at his doorstep and Wilson helps to hide him. He has to make a decision: either he remains loyal to his fellow migrant or chooses a secure, happy European life. Wilson makes a choice. After graduating in 1987 Roland Vranik became a member of the Positive Production Workshop in Budapest. He directed movies in the Netherlands and participated in productions produced by students of the Dutch Film Academy. His first feature film, entitled ‘Black Brush’, was made in 2005 and won the main prize of the Hungarian Film Week. Vranik previously worked as Béla Tarr’s first assistant director. Festivals and awards: 2016 - Stockholm International Film Festival - Impact Award nominee Supported by the Hungarian National Film Fund
Supported by the Hungarian National Film Fund
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Feature Film
COYOTE (Kojot) 127 min, 2017 Director: Márk Kostyál Cast: Péter Rudolf, Bence Tasnádi, Tamás Szabó Kimmel, Dóra Sztarenki, Ági Szirtes, József Szarvas, Eszter NagyKálózy, Iván Angelus, Marcell Nagy, István Znamenák, Sándor Terhes Producers: Gábor Kálomista, Dorottya Helmeczy Production company: Megafilm Ltd. Festivals: kati.vajda@filmlmalap.hu, marta.benyei@filmalap.hu, Sales: klaudia.androsovits@filmalap.hu, orr.krisztina@filmalap.hu Sultry heat, dinginess, unspoken social problems and hierarchical infighting. This is the town of Tűzkő, somewhere in Hungary, in our days. This is where Misi arrives to inherit his grandfather’s house and property. Misi is a disillusioned and frustrated young man who is constantly on the run and who does not find his place in the world, in work or in relationships. He commits himself to rebuilding the house with some of his friends, which disrupts the interests of the local leaders. Serious struggles ensue for the land, for love and for life. Misi transforms into a coyote in all respects. This is a real Eastern with extraordinary imagery. Supported by the Hungarian National Film Fund
IT’S NOT THE TIME OF MY LIFE (Ernelláék Farkaséknál) 81 min, 2016 Director: Szabolcs Hajdu Cast: Szabolcs Hajdu, Orsolya Török-Illyés, Erika Tankó, Domokos Szabó, Lujza Hajdu, Zsigmond Hajdu Producers: Daniel Herner, Gábor Ferenczy, András Muhi, Zsófia Muhi Production company: Filmworks Festivals, sales: ceo@filmworks.hu Eszter, her husband Farkas, and their five-year-old son Bruno are paid an unexpected visit in the middle of the night. Eszter’s sister Ernella, her husband Albert, and their daughter Laura have returned from a year spent in Scotland where, contrary to expectations, they weren’t able to settle down. It soon becomes clear that the two families have never really gotten along with one another. Hajdu presents an uncompromising, intimate study of two families thrown together by circumstance to temporarily share an unusual apartment. Szabolcs Hajdu is a Hungarian screenwriter, actor, film and theatre director and teacher. Since 2000 he has made seven feature films. Most of them were premiered and awarded at the biggest international festivals, such as Cannes, Berlin, Toronto and Karlovy Vary. Festivals and awards: 2016 - Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (World Premiere) - Crystal Globe Award Winner, Best Actor (Szabolcs Hajdu) 2016 - Cottbus International Film Festival Best Direction 2016 - International Bosphorus Film Festival Best Feature Film, Best Editing
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Feature Film
JUST DROP DEAD (Halj már meg!)
KILLS ON WHEELS (Tiszta szívvel)
105 min, 2016
105 min, 2016
Director: Zoltán Kamondi Main cast: Adél Kováts, Eszter Ónodi, Alma Virág Pájer, Eszter Csákányi, Géza D. Hegedűs, György Cserhalmi, Mari Törőcsik, Gábor Koncz, Ákos Kőszegi, Zoltán Mucsi, János Kulka Producers: Gábor Ferenczy, Attila Tőzsér Production company: Focusfox & Honeymood Production Festivals: kati.vajda@filmalap.hu, marta.benyei@filmalap.hu Sales: klaudia.androsovits@filmalap.hu, orr.krisztina@filmalap.hu
Director: Attila Till Main cast: Ádám Fekete, Szabolcs Thuróczy, Mónika Balsai, Zoltán Fenyvesi, Lídia Danish Producer: Judit Stalter Production company: Laokoon Filmgroup Festivals: marta.benyei@filmalap.hu, kati.vajda@filmalap.hu Sales: klaudia.androsovits@filmalap.hu
Following the sudden death of a mysterious train driver in his sixties, the Wife, the Lover, the Illegitimate Daughter and an increasing number of shady characters from his spurious past want to know the true identity of the man they loved. They are dying to know who was truly loved by him and where he hid the fantastic fruit of his double life. In their deadly struggle, our heroes find themselves at the centre of a satirical criminal comedy, the sinful roots of which stretch back to the eighties, the closing decade of the socialist era. Zoltán Kamondi was a Hungarian film- and theatre director, actor, screenwriter and producer. He directed several internationally acclaimed, award-winning shorts and feature films. In 2003, he was awarded the Balázs Béla Prize. Kamondi died on 17 March 2016 at the age of 55. Festivals and awards: 2016 - Cairo International Film Festival Supported by the Hungarian National Film Fund
This is a meaningful action comedy of a wheelchairbound assassin gang. Driven by despair and the fear of becoming useless, a 20-year-old boy, his friend and an ex-fireman offer their services to the mafia. But things are not what they seem. The boundaries between reality and fiction blur and the story becomes a whirling kaleidoscope of gangsters and gunfights, but also of the challenge of life in a wheelchair and the pain caused by a father’s rejection. Attila Till graduated from the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts in the Intermedia department. His first feature film, ‘Panic’, premiered in 2008 at the Hungarian Film Review where it was recognised in a number of categories and won the Best Main Actress award. In 2011, Till’s short film ‘Beast’ won several international awards, including the Silver Dragon Prize for Best Fiction Film at the Krakow Film Festival and the Bronze Horse for Best Short Film at the Stockholm Film Festival, as well as being selected for the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs section at the Festival de Cannes. Festivals and awards: 2016 - Chicago International Film Festival Roger Ebert Award 2016 - Cottbus International Film Festival FIPRESCI Award, Ecumenical Award 2016 - Thessaloniki International Film Festival Best Film Supported by the Hungarian National Film Fund
HUNGARIAN FILM MAGAZINE
61
Feature Film
LILY LANE (Liliom ösvény)
LOOP (Hurok)
91 min, 2015
95 min, 2016
Director: Bence Fliegauf Main cast: Bálint Sótonyi, Angéla Stefanovics, Miklós B. Székely Producers: Ernő Mesterházy, Bence Fliegauf Production company: Hímpor Film kft. Festivals: contact@filmsboutique.com Sales: gabor@filmsboutique.com
Director: Isti Madarász Main cast: Dénes Száraz, Dorina Martinovics, Zsolt Anger, Géza D. Hegedűs Producer: Tamás Hutlassa Production company: Café Film Festivals: marta.benyei@filmalap.hu, kati.vajda@filmalap.hu Sales: klaudia.androsovits@filmalap.hu
Rebeka has been living alone for a while when she meets her son Dani. The two of them share a life full of grand secrets and magical tales. Not long after their reunion, Rebeka’s mother dies, forcing her to face her past, look her father up and go back to her childhood home - where her mother passed away. Tale by tale, Rebeka reveals her past to her son. Her memories soon turn into demons, but Rebeka and Dani do not turn back, choosing instead to face them head on - embracing them, riding them and using them to move forward. Bence Fliegauf has become one of Hungary’s most internationally recognised young directors, even though he has never attended film school. Born in Budapest, Fliegauf worked as an assistant director for television before continuing on the path towards directing, screenwriting, set design and sound engineering. His first feature film, ‘The Forest’, was premiered in 2003 in the Forum section at the Berlinale, and ten years later his film ‘Just the Wind’ won the festival’s Grand Jury Prize. Festivals and awards: 2016 - World premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival, Panorama section 2016 - European Film Festival, Lecce – Golden Olive Tree Award for Best Film 2016 - European Film Festival, Pali'c - Critics’ Award Supported by the Hungarian National Film Fund
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‘Loop’ is a time-twist thriller, where the ideas of beginning and ending very quickly merge. Adam loses his pregnant girlfriend in an accident but is soon presented with a series of chances to correct his mistakes that led to her death. But a new opportunity does not mean a clean slate, so he is forced to face the complicated repercussions of his earlier decisions while trying to keep his girlfriend alive. Isti Madarász (1976), director and writer, started his career in 2006 with the short film ‘Előbb-utóbb’, which was selected for the Valladolid International Film Festival and won the Golden Spike Award for Best Short Film. Festivals and awards: 2016 - Cairo International Film Festival Panorama Section Supported by the Hungarian National Film Fund
Feature Film
ON BODY AND SOUL (Testro ´´ l és lélekro ´´ l)
STRANGLED (A martfu ´´ i rém)
116 min, 2017
120 min, 2016
Director: Ildikó Enyedi Main cast: Géza Morcsányi, Alexandra Borbély, Zoltán Schneider Producers: Mónika Mécs, András Muhi, Ernő Mesterházy Production company: Inforg - M&M Film Kft. Festivals: louis@filmsboutique.com Sales: emma@filmsboutique.com
Director: Árpád Sopsits Main cast: Péter Bárnai, Károly Hajduk, Zsolt Anger, Gábor Jászberényi, Zsolt Trill, Zsófia Szamosi, Mónika Balsai Producers: Gábor Ferenczy, Attila Tőzsér Production company: Focus Fox Studio Festivals: kati.vajda@filmalap.hu, marta.benyei@filmalap.hu
By complete chance, two introverts find out that they share the same dream every night. They are puzzled, incredulous and a bit frightened. As they hesitantly accept this strange coincidence, they try to recreate what happens in their dream in broad daylight. Ildikó Enyedi has written and directed five feature films and several shorts, for which she has won more than forty international prizes. She is also a member of the European Film Academy. Festivals and awards: 2017 - Berlinale International Film Festival
An innocent man who spends ten years in prison for something he never did. A serial killer at large who almost gets away with his crime. A prosecutor who demands the death sentence for the innocent man and later tries to prevent the truth from being revealed. An investigator who is finally obliged to conduct investigations against himself. And another investigator who is obsessed with justice... This is the story of these people and their families, intertwined in three timelines and presented in a psychological thriller in the unique atmosphere of rural Hungary in the 1950s and 1960s.
Supported by the Hungarian National Film Fund
Festivals and awards: 2016 – Warsaw International Film Festival 2016 – Cairo Intarnational Film Festival
EFM screenings 11 Feb 09:30 CinemaxX 10 13 Feb 16:15 CineStar 5 16 Feb 10:00 CinemaxX 9
Supported by the Hungarian National Film Fund
Competition screenings 10 Feb 09:00 & 16:00 11 Feb 09:30 & 21:30 11 Feb 21:00 13 Feb 18:30 19 Feb 12:30
EFM screening 12 Feb 09:00 CinemaxX 19
Berlinale Palast Friedrichstadt Palast Bundesplatz Kino Haus der Berliner Festspiele Friedrichstadt Palast
HUNGARIAN FILM MAGAZINE
63
Feature Film
THAT TRIP WE TOOK WITH DAD (Utazás apánkkal)
WELL (Kút)
111 min, 2016
Director: Attila Gigor Cast: Péter Jankovics, Niké Kurta, Roland Tzafetás, Csaba Horváth, Nóra Trokán, Lia Pokorny, Zsolt László, Dorottya Udvaros, Irma Milovic, Ferenc Pusztai Producer: Ferenc Pusztai Production company: KMH Film Festivals: kati.vajda@filmalap.hu Sales: klaudia.androsovits@filmalap.hu
Director: Anca Miruna Lăzărescu Main cast: Alex Mărgineanu, Răzvan Enciu, Ovidiu Schumacher, Susanne Bormann, Manuel Klein, Doru Ana, Marcela Nistor Producers: David Lindner Leporda, Verona Maier Co-producers: Cătălin Mitulescu, Andrea Taschler, Daniel Mitulescu, Nándor Lovas, Fredrik Zander, Jessica Ask Production companies: Filmalle, Mirage Film, Strada Film, The Chimney Pot Sverige AB, Film I Vast Festivals: david@filmallee.com Sales: Gábor Csurdi - A Company Hungary Kft. ‘That Trip we Took with Dad’ is a moving story set in a turbulent year - 1968. The Prague Spring sets the scene, when a German family from Arad (Romania) – two very different brothers and their father - start a journey towards the GDR. There, the older brother hopes his weary father can get surgery in order to restore the family harmony. But after crossing the East German border, their return is closed by Soviet tanks moving into the CSSR. Suddenly the family finds itself in West Germany and our protagonists are faced with a universal question: how much do you sacrifice to be reunited with your family? Anca Lăzărescu’s graduation film, the Filmallee production ‘Silent River’ (Apele Tac), had its premiere in the international competition of the 2011 Berlinale Shorts, and has since been invited to over 300 international festivals, winning more than 80 awards. The Romanian Film Academy named Lăzărescu the ‘Upcoming Talent’ and awarded her film ‘Best Romanian Short’ in March 2012. Her documentary film ‘One Day Today will be Once’ won at the Syracuse International Film Festival and has also been invited to different international festivals. Festivals and awards: 2016 - Jameson CineFest - CICAE Award of the Confederation of Art Cinema 2016 - KINOdisea Film Festival - New Discovery Award, Best Youth Film 2016 – München Filmfest - Special Mention to Ferenc Darvas, composer Supported by the Hungarian National Film Fund
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97 min, 2016
At a petrol station in the middle of nowhere, a young man arrives to meet his father he has not seen for 30 years. On the same day a van with four prostitutes on the way to Switzerland breaks down at the very same petrol station. The three days they spend together will change their lives forever. Attila Gigor gained major recognition with his debut Feature ‘The Investigator’. He is also known as the writer and director of the HBO hit series ‘In Treatment’. Supported by the Hungarian National Film Fund
Feature Documentary
BOOK OF FATES (Sorok könyve) 90 min, 2016 Director: Dezső Zsigmond Producers: Miklós Szederkényi, Sándor Buglya Production company: Dunatáj Foundation Festivals: kati.vajda@filmalap.hu, marta.benyei@filmalap.hu Sales: dunataj@gmail.com We would like to make a film about a fictional Transylvanian village. A village whose streets and houses, currents and mountains, church and tavern - like the villagers themselves - are all real. This ‘virtual’ village and its inhabitants come together from various other villages and landscapes and is made up of people and families we know from different parts of Transylvania, whose lives we have previously chronicled on film. Their fates write the village’s stories, taken from the book of fates and then used to shape the plot of our film. Dezső Zsigmond was born in 1956 in Gyöngyös, Hungary. Since 1983, he has made several documentaries and feature films, including award-winning works such as ‘With Blood and Rope’ (Vérrel és kötéllel), ‘Nurse Józsi’ and the Yellow Bicycle’ (Józsi nővér és a sárga bicikli), ‘Snail Fortress’ (Csigavár), ‘Witch’s Circle’ (Boszorkánykör) and ‘The King of Crabs’ (A rákok királya).
50 MORE MINUTES (Magyar csapat - “...még 50 perc…”) 72 min, 2016 Director: András Pires Muhi Cast: Sándor Egervári, Pál Dárdai, Bernd Storck, the players of the Hungarian national football team (20122016) Producer: Gábor Kovács Production company: Filmpartners Festivals, sales: gabor.kovacs@filmpartners.hu This documentary reveals the journey of the Hungarian national football team on their quest to qualify for the European Championship. The story is portrayed through an honest lens and includes behind-the-scenes footage that has never been seen before. András Pires Muhi was born in Budapest in 1984. An ex-footballer himself, he cares a lot about the game. ‘50 more minutes’ is his second documentary about Hungarian football. He mainly works as a producer.
SOUL EXODUS 93 min, 2016 Director: Csaba Bereczki Main cast: Daniel Kahn, Bob Cohen, Michael Alpert, Jake Shulman-Ment, Psoy Korolenko Producer: Pál Sándor Production company: Film Street Festivals: kati.vajda@filmalap.hu, marta.benyei@ filmalap.hu Sales: klaudia.androsovits@filmalap.hu Once upon a time at the beginning of the 20th century there lived a klezmer musician and storyteller, Prince Nazaroff. Many people refuse to believe that he ever existed, but five 21st-century young and not-so-young men do. They have imagined him, and imagination can be so much stronger than reality. To this day, Nazaroff lives in them. They cannot accept that something could disappear forever. They call themselves “The Brothers Nazaroff”. Told through klezmer music, this is a deeply emotional and modern story about identity and kinship, emigration and inner emigration, brothers and godbrothers, religion and faith, belief and disbelief.
Festivals and awards: 2016 - Verzio International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival - Official Selection 2016 - Jewish Cultural Festival in Budapest Official Selection Supported by the Hungarian National Film Fund
HUNGARIAN FILM MAGAZINE
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Feature Documentary
TITITÁ (A zene felemel)
TRAIN TO ADULTHOOD (Reményvasút)
85 min (TV version: 54 min), 2015
79 min, 2015
Director: Tamás Almási Main cast: Antal Kuru, Ferenc Snétberger Producer: Tamás Almási and Julianna Ugrin Production companies: Filmdimenzió Kft., A Zene Felemel Kft. Festivals: marta.benyei@filmalap.hu, kati.vajda@filmalap.hu Sales: klaudia.androsovits@filmalap.hu
Director: Klára Trencsényi Producer: Julianna Ugrin Production company: Éclipse Film Kft. Festivals, sales: julianna.ugrin@eclipsefilm.hu
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. Does he have the ability to change what feels like a predestined life and make the most of a golden opportunity? The film is a full-length documentary about struggle and hope, and also introduces the excellent work of the Snétberger Music Talent Centre. Festivals and awards: 2015 - Sarajevo Film Festival - Special Jury Prize 2016 - Lagów International Film Festival In Competition 2016 - Thessaloniki International Documentary Film Festival
‘Train to Adulthood’ is a coming-of-age story about three youngsters who find an escape from life’s ordeals by working on the Budapest Children’s Railway. While they enjoy pretending being responsible adults on the train, at home they are forced to suddenly mature. The train is a metaphor used to explore present-day Hungary: a democracy in trouble. Festivals and awards: 2015 - DOK Leipzig - Next Masters Competition Golden Dove 2016 - ZagrebDox Intl. Documentary FF Special Mention Supported by HBO Europe
Supported by the Media Patronage Programme of the Hungarian Media Council
WHAT A CIRCUS! (Mi ez a cirkusz?) 85 min, 2017 Director: Glória Halász Main cast: The Recirquel Company Producer: Gábor Osváth Production company: Filmfabriq, Fanatics Film Festivals, sales: info@filmfabriq.hu Balancing between reality and fiction, 'What a Circus!' is an intimate documentary about Recirquel, a contemporary circus company based in Budapest, Hungary. The film's crew followed the company for years, including their latest show's rehearsals. Between the sweats and tears, we see the performers' dreams and fears come to life in spectacular scenes of stunts made in suburban settings. Glória Halász previously directed 'Iron Curtain', a documentary about the members of the Vác City Prison Theater, and 'Dr. Lala', about a clown doctor, which gained the award for Best Documentary at the Opuzen Film Festival in Croatia and at the International CineFest of Miskolc Hungary.
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TV Drama
DEMIMONDE (Félvilág)
THE GREY WAR (Szürke senkik)
88 min, 2015
64 min, 2016
Director: Attila Szász Main cast: Patrícia Kovács, Dorka Gryllus, Laura Döbrösi Producers: Tamás Lajos, Tamás Mink Production company: Szupermodern Stúdió Kft. Festivals, sales: info@szupermodern.hu
Director: István Kovács Main cast: József S. Kovács, Zsolt Trill, László Keszég, Levente Molnár, Björn Freiberg Producer: Tamás Lajos Production company: Film Positive Productions Festivals, sales: Film Positive Productions +36 1 238 0200
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 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. This film is based on a true story about love, sex, power, passion and murder. Hungarian writer-director Attila Szász graduated from the Academy of Drama and Film in Budapest in 1996. He worked as a film critic for several years and started directing from 2002. His first short film, ‘Now You See Me, Now You Don’t’, won 18 awards at various festivals. His first feature-length movie, the political thriller ‘The Ambassador to Bern’, released in 2014, was invited to screen at over 30 film festivals and won 9 awards. Festivals and awards: 2015 - Montreal World Film Festival - Nominated for the Grand Prix des Amériques 2016 - Nashville Film Festival - Best Actress (Dorka Gryllus), Southwest Airlines Audience Award (Attila Szász), nominated for the Grand Jury Prize 2016 - Tiburon International Film Festival - Golden Reel Award for Best Film, Best Director (Attila Szász), Best Actor (János Kulka), Best Screenplay (Norbert Köbli), Best Cinematography (András Nagy)
Set in 1918, ‘The Grey War’ tells the story of five Austrian-Hungarian soldiers on a daring mission behind enemy lines. Led by Sergeant Fodor and accompanied by a pigeon named Noah, Kramer, Radu, Molnár and The Kid fight their way through the Italian mountains while questioning the reason for their mission. István Kovács, born in 1985 in a Hungarian minority in former Yugoslavia, spent most of his youth in the southern Hungarian town of Szeged. He enrolled in the University of Theatre and Film Arts of Budapest in 2011, where he recently received his Director BA degree in János Szász’s class. His graduation movie, ‘The Sound of Concrete’, screened at festivals including Montreal, Camerimage, Asia and Cairo. Supported by the Media Patronage Programme of the Hungarian Media Council
Supported by the Media Patronage Programme of the Hungarian Media Council
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TV Documentary
HARM (Seb)
MOTHER’S IMPRINT (Beágyazott emlékeink)
52 min, 2015
71 min, 2017
Director: Dénes Nagy Producers: Sára László, Marcell Gerő (Campfilm), Anna Závorszky (HBO Europe) Executive producer: Hanka Kastelicová (HBO Europe) Production company: Campfilm Festivals: office@campfilm.eu Sales: anna.zavorszky@hbo.eu
Director: Kata Oláh Producer: Sándor Csukás Production company: TV Com - Makabor Studio Festivals, sales: 1kataolah1@gmail.com
Harm means deliberate self-injury 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. Festivals and awards: 2015 - Aranyszem Festival - Best Cinematography in a Documentary 2015 - Sarajevo Film Festival 2015 - Verzio International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival
Kata Oláh has always worked in the film industry, but it was only 5 years ago that she started to focus on directing. This is her first feature-length documentary film.
THE VIRTUOSO (A virtuóz)
WOMEN’S REBELLION (Asszonyok lázadása)
52 min, 2016
72 min, 2016 Director: István Kovács Producer: Tamás Lajos Co-producer: Gábor Osváth Production company: Szupermodern Stúdió Festivals, sales: Szupermodern Stúdió
Director: Attila Kékesi Cast: Georges Cziffra, Soleilka Cziffra, Georges Cziffra Jr., János Balázs, Sándor Csikós Producer: Miklós Havas Production company: Habana Media Festivals: habanamedia@gmail.com Sales: dudas.viktor@mtva.hu Georges Cziffra was without a doubt one of the greatest piano virtuosos of the 20th century. Born and raised in a poor suburb of Budapest, he learned to play the piano at the age of five as an autodidact and, at the age of eight, was the youngest student ever to be admitted to the Academy of Music of Budapest. For twenty years, he made a living working as a pianist in a bar. He was also imprisoned by the Communist regime. By taking a walk through a life that was full of twists, this film shows how a prodigy could become the greatest virtuoso of the 20th century. Attila Kékesi is a Béla Balázs award-winning Hungarian documentary director.
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This is the story of an Eastern European woman, my mother, born in 1940. Through the kaleidoscope of her painful memories, narrated in sentences, timeless pains open up and reveal events that we have never heard before. The difficult times of the communism, of the revolution in 1956 and of the regime change in 1989 have left their mark on her life and soul, deepening her lost identity. Her only grandson is the first in the family to find a connection to the belief of his great-grandparents. As a messenger of the ancestors, he can help his grandmother, our mother, to remember.
HUNGARIAN FILM MAGAZINE
Tresnjevac (Oromhegyes), Serbia, 1992. The women of a village inhabited by Hungarians decide not to allow their husbands to go to war. They organise a resistance and found an ‘intellectual liberal republic’ in the local pub called Zitzer Club. István Kovács was born in 1985 in a Hungarian minority in former Yugoslavia, but spent most of his youth in the southern Hungarian town of Szeged. He enrolled in the University of Theatre and Film Arts of Budapest in 2011, where he was recently awarded his Director BA degree in János Szász’s class. His graduation movie, ‘The Sound of Concrete’, screened at festivals including Montreal, Camerimage, Asia and Cairo.
Educational Documentary
CITY OF TERROR (Budapest ostroma) 2 x 45 min, 2015 Director: Tamás Babos Producers: Attila Nóti-Nagy, Erika Kissimon Production company: Central European Media Group Festivals, sales: notinagy@gmail.com ‘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, comprising two Soviet fronts, held up a force twice as strong 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 kilometres from the capital of the Third Reich. Festivals and awards: 2016 - Hungarian Film Week 2016 - Nice International Film Festival – Nominated for Best Director of a Foreign Language Documentary 2016 - UK International Veterans’ Film Festival Supported by the Media Patronage Programme of the Hungarian Media Council
THE KUNSÁG - THE SECRET LIFE OF THE HUNGARIAN PUSZTA (Vad Kunság - A Puszta rejtett élete) 52 min, 2016 Director: Szabolcs Mosonyi Producer: Erika Bagladi Production company: NatFilm Hungary Festivals, sales: natfilm@mailbox.hu In the middle of the Carpathian Basin, lying between the Tisza and the Danube, the landscape is like any other plain in Europe. However, the Great Hungarian Plain is different; it has a secret life. During the breeding season, male great bustards hustle and push each other on the endless pastures. In spring and autumn, the migrating birds make the white salty lakes look like big, crowded airports. As it was being hunted, the golden jackal had to learn to become invisible, but has since returned. It wanders alone before finding a mate, and rears its pups to form a pack of its own. In the frosty night the new pack wails together, “This is our land, our empire”. Festivals and awards: 2016 - Hungarian Film Week - Best Educational Documentary 2015 - Aranyszem Festival - Award for Best Cinematography in a Nature Documentary Supported by the Media Patronage Programme of the Hungarian Media Council
A SOLDIER’S TALE (Katonatörténet) 52 min, 2015 Director: Zsuzsa Katona Producer: Fruzsina Skrabski Production company: Becsengettünk Production Company Festivals, sales: asterfilm@gmail.com Noemi Katona, a 28-year-old student, found the diary of her grandfather from the Second World War. The journal relates a soldier’s everyday life in the Hungarian army between December 1944 and October 1945. It is about American and French captivity, the reality of the war, humiliation, comradeship, faith and the struggle for survival. Noemi started to pass between the Hungarian village of Mihályfa and the German municipality of Bretzenheim, in Bad Kreuznach, to follow in the footsteps of her grandfather’s diary. Festivals and awards: 2016 - Hungarian Film Week - Official Programme 2016 - AVANCA Film Festival - Official Competition 2016 - Mediawave - Online Competition Programme Supported by the Media Patronage Programme of the Hungarian Media Council
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Short Documentary
ONCE UPON A TIME THERE WERE TWO BALLERINAS (Volt egyszer két ballerina)
THOSE (Azok)
25 min, 2016
Director: Krisztina Meggyes Producer: Miklós Bosnyák Production company: University of Theatre and Film Arts Budapest Festivals, sales: meggyeskrisztina@gmail.com
Director: Linda Dombrovszky Producer: Linda Dombrovszky Production company: Stúdió 42/B Filmgyártó-és Forgalmazó Kft Festivals, sales: dombrovszky@gmail.com “You have to look for what can be loved… then your soul can be at peace”. This is the confession of the Kolozs twins, who are 95 years old now. The sometime world-famous ballerinas survived most of the historical tragedies of the 20th century. Linda Dombrovszky studied at the Academy of Film and Drama in Budapest as film and television director and at Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome, graduating in 2013. Her documentaries and short films attended and received awards at several festivals. Festivals and awards: 2016 - São Paulo International Short Film Festival 2016 - Budapest International Documentary Festival 2016 - Verzio International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival
Short Film
28 min, 2015
Vámosszabadi was a peaceful, wealthy village in Hungary until a sudden event disturbed the tranquillity of the settlement: a new refugee camp was established in 2013, just kilometres away from the Hungarian-Slovak border. The villagers reacted strongly and started to protest, and an activist group decided to do whatever it took to get rid of the migrants. This situation highlighted another hidden conflict. There are two kinds of people in the village: the mostly older, original villagers and the younger, wealthy newcomers. When the migrants arrived, the villagers had divided opinions: the older ones accepted their presence and the newcomers became more and more angry. This little village faced a difficulty that the rest of the world would also, just a few months later. Their new situation raised questions regarding tolerance, fear of the unknown and migration. Krisztina Meggyes has worked as director and content editor on several documentary films and documentary series. Festivals and awards: 2015 - Hungarian Film Critics’ Award - Best Documentary of the Year 2016 - Astra Film Festival Award for original approach in a docschool film
BEAUTIFUL FIGURE (Szép alak) 16 min, 2016 Director: Hajni Kis Producer: Miklós Bosnyák Production company: University of Theatre and Film Arts Festivals, sales: info@filmfabriq.hu Elsie, the cleaning lady at a high school, falls in love with one of the female students. Festivals and awards: 2016 - 43rd Student Academy Awards® Nominated 2017 - International Short Film Week Regensburg Official Selection 2017 - BFI Flare: London LGBT Film Festival Official Selection
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Short Film
THE CARROT (A répa)
DIALOGUE
12 min, 2015
7 min, 2016
Director: Balázs Lengyel Producer: Ferenc Pusztai Production company: KMH Film Festivals, sales: lindapfeiffer@kmhfilm.com
Director: Gábor Fabricius Writer: Gábor Fabricius Producers: Ferenc Pusztai, Gábor Fabricius Production companies: KMH Film, Otherside Stories Festivals: marta.benyei@filmalap.hu, kati.vajda@filmalap.hu, krisztina.orr@filmalap.hu Sales: danieldeak@daazo.com
Andrei finds an enormous carrot in a field. He brings together his family to dig it out, but soon scientists from a nearby nuclear power plant take notice. Andrei would do anything to keep his treasure and feed his family. Balázs Lengyel has since developed his first feature film (‘Lajkó’, 2016) within the recently announced Incubator Programme of the Hungarian National Film Fund. Supported by the Media Patronage Programme of the Hungarian Media Council
Where does an East German on the run in 1989 cross paths with a Nigerian who is also running to the West in 2016? Only in a discourse on Europe’s future. Gábor Fabricius is a media designer, film director and writer. In 2000 he won Gold Media Lion at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, then moved towards directing shorts, music videos, documentaries and multimedia pieces.
HIDE AND SEEK (Bújócska) 14 min, 2017 Director: Benő Gábor Baranyi Cast: Mátyás Kabók, Róza Koricsánszki, László Petró, Gergely Balogh, Csaba Balogh, Benjámin Pádár, Konrád Quintus Producers: Zsuzsi Gyurin, Benő Gábor Baranyi Production company: Salamandra Film Festivals, sales: krisztina.orr@filmalap.hu, marta.benyei@filmalap.hu, kati.vajda@filmalap.hu, salamandrafilm@salamandrafilm.com The story takes place in a poor family in Hungary. The main character is a 7-year-old boy called Matyi. He loves to play hide and seek, but he knows no bounds. He is constantly hiding somewhere, annoying his parents, and he refuses to come out even when the whole family is looking for him. As he came into the family as the fifth child, his mother had never intended to keep him, and he is just another pain for her to bear. However, his father is very fond of the boy and he is the only one with sufficient patience for him. One day, the father disappears and the mother is left alone with their undisciplined child. The film is shot in poor neighbourhoods with amateur actors and is based on a true story.
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Short Film
PAY DAY (Fizeto ´´ s nap)
SING (Mindenki)
24 min, 2016
25 min, 2016
Director: Szilárd Bernáth Producers: Iván Angelusz, Péter Reich Production company: Katapult Film Festivals, sales: office@katapultfilm.hu
Director: Kristóf Deák Producers: Anna Udvardy, Kristóf Deák Production company: Meteor Film Festivals, sales: kristof.deak@yahoo.co.uk
Extortionate moneylenders give credits in the poorest settlements from Budapest to the east. For many this represents a last opportunity and they therefore value the loan. Feri still has to decide whether or not to denounce Simon, the dreadful usurer in the area.
Zsófi has found it challenging to fit in at her new school, but her outlook begins to change when she is admitted into the school’s famous choir. That is, until she learns that the choir director may not be the inspirational teacher she is portrayed to be. It will take Zsófi and her new friend Liza to reveal the truth.
Festivals and awards: 2017 - Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival - In Competition 2016 - Friss Hús Budapest International Shortfilm Festival
Festivals and awards: 2016 - Festival du Cinema européen - Audience Award 2016 - TIFF Kids International Film Festival People’s Choice Award 2016 – Short Shorts Film Festival & Asia - Grand Prix, Best International Short, Audience Award 2016 – Chicago International Children’s Film Festival Best Live Action Short Film 2017 - Academy Awards® - Shortlisted for Live Action Shorts Supported by the Media Patronage Programme of the Hungarian Media Council
STUDENT UNION (Gólyatábor) 8 min, 2016 Director: György Mór Kárpáti Producers: Ágnes Horváth Szabó, Gábor Osváth, Viktória Petrányi Festivals: gabor@boddah.hu Sales: emilie@originefilms.fr The return train journey from an undergraduates summer camp, where 18-year-old Dóra has just been sexually abused. Now the president of the students’ union wants to talk with her. Festivals and awards: 2016 - FilmFestival Cottbus - Official Selection 2017 - ZINEBI - Official Selection 2017 - Festival Premiers Plans d’Angers Official Selection 2017 - Slamdance Film Festival North American premiere
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Short Film
MR. MILLER (Szabó úr)
WELCOME
21 min, 2015
30 min, 2016
Director: Áron Ferenczik Producers: Miklós Bosnyák, Áron Ferenczik Production company: University of Theatre and Film Arts Festivals, sales: arcsur@hotmail.com
Director: Balázs Dudás Cast: Benett Vilmányi, Éva Kerekes, Csaba Horváth, Tamás Kovács, Veronika Balogh, Zsolt Zayzon, Géza Fazakas, Zoltán Géczi, László Keszég, Béla Ficzere, Dávid Vizi Producer: Gábor Kovács Production company: Filmpartners Festivals: dudasfilm@gmail.com, kati.vajda@filmalap.hu, krisztina.orr@filmalap.hu, marta.benyei@filmalap.hu Sales: dudasfilm@gmail.com
Mr. Miller cannot feel. He is never angry and never sad. In fact, he does not have anyemotions and cannot taste, smell or suffer from pain. Other than that, he is atypical Hungarian nobody exploited by all the other Hungarian nobodies.Strangers, neighbours and friends all want something from Mr. Miller, and hegladly provides. In a single day he loses everything a human being could lose, which turns out to be great fun for everyone except for him. This is anabsurd tragicomedy about the utter deconstruction of the imperfect Mr. Miller. Festivals and awards: 2016 - Friss Hús Budapest International Shortfilm Festival – Best Short Film 2016 - Budapest Short Film Festival - Silver Busho Prize
Welcome tells a story of a typical eighteen-year-old teenager called David. After eight years of living in North Serbia, David and his mother move back to Hungary, to David’s father. A psychological battle soon begins between a man who wants to be a father and a son who refuses his authority. As the story moves forward, David’s secret (he smuggles refugees across the border) is gradually revealed. His mother is the first to find out but is unable to stop her son. David gets involved in a dangerous mission to rescue a refugee girl and so now his father is also forced to face his son’s secret. David and the girl eventually end up sitting side by side in the back seat of a police car. Supported by the Hungarian National Film Fund
UCHEBNIK 20 min, 2016 Director: Dávid Csicskár Producers: Gábor Ferenczy, András Muhi Production company: Focus Fox Festivals: kati.vajda@filmalap.hu, marta.benyei@filmalap.hu Sales: rafay.aniko@focusfox.hu October 1956, the Hungarian Revolution is in full swing and students in a small town are busy burning their Russian grammar books, believing they will never have to study the language again. The Revolution is consequently crushed by Soviet troops and the students must present the books to avoid being kicked out of school. A young boy risks life and limb to help his idol, an older boy from the same school, as he tries his utmost to befriend him.
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Short Animation BALCONY (Balkon) 6 min, 2015 Director: Dávid Dell’Edera Producers: Péter Csornay, Éva M. Tóth Production company: Budapest Metropolitan University Festivals: jbarkoczi@metropolitan.hu, Sales: csornay.peter@umbrella.tv Everyone does what they want. The people in this film are not yet sure what they want to do. Festivals and awards: 2016 - Festival International du Film d’Animation d’Annecy - In Competition 2016 - Friss Hús Budapest International Shortfilm Festival - Special Mention Supported by the Media Patronage Programme of the Hungarian Media Council
BEYOND
HUGO BUMFELDT
10 min, 2015
12 min, 2015
Director: Milán Kopasz Producer: József Fülöp Production company: Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design Budapest Festivals: zsbanyai@mome.hu Sales: klaudia.androsovits@filmalap.hu
Director: Éva Katinka Bognár Producer: József Fülöp Production company: Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design Festivals: glaser@mome.hu Sales: kati.vajda@filmalap.hu
A black hole is a place in space where gravity pulls so strongly that not even light can get out. There are also places and situations on Earth that have a similar, strange attraction. Some people back off, while others step closer to try to observe it. A woman jumps at the seaside, a housewife prepares a meal, a bug collector eats his lunch in the forest, a man sweeps a stage and a caver sinks deeper and deeper into a grotto. Five characters who all encounter strange situations to experience an extraordinary space-time event.
This film is about an alien boy, Hugo, who lives on a small, far-away planet. One day he gets his first pet as a present – a real scuba diver taken from Earth. His excitement about the diver has no limits, and in his childlike selfishness he does not realise that he is playing his terrible, yet sweet games with an intelligent human being.
Festivals and awards: 2016 - Hudson Valley International Film Festival – Best Animated Film 2016 - International Students Creative Award Osaka Official Selection, 1st Prize Official selection in more than 50 film festivals worldwide Supported by the Hungarian National Film Fund
Éva Katinka Bognár is a director from Budapest, Hungary. She graduated from the animation Masters programme at Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design in 2015 with the hand-drawn short film ‘Hugo Bumfeldt’. Besides directing and developing animation films, she also works as a concept artist and illustrator. Festivals and awards: 2016 - International Short Film Festival Oberhausen International Children’s and Youth Film Competition, Prize of the Children’s Jury 2016 - Montecatini International Short Film Festival Best School Animation Film 2016 - Austin Film Festival - Best Animated Short, Jury Award Supported by the Hungarian National Film Fund
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Short Animation
THE HANGNAIL PICKER (A körömágyszaggató)
LOVE
9 min, 2015
Director: Réka Bucsi Producers: Marc Bodin-Joyeux, Gábor Osváth Production companies: Passion Paris, Boddah Festivals: danieldeak@daazo.com Sales: annabel@autourdeminuit.com
Director: Krisztián Király Producer: József Fülöp Production company: Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design Festivals, sales: klaudia.androsovits@filmalap.hu A twenty-something Hungarian guy ponders over the sometimes unpleasant, sometimes funny, but undoubtedly determining experiences of his life so far. Festivals and awards: 2016 - Friss Hús Budapest International Shortfilm Festival 2016 - Mediawave Film and Music Festival 2016 - Huniwood, Ungarisches Filmfestival in Berlin Supported by the Hungarian National Film Fund
14 min, 2016
‘LOVE’ is a short film that describes affection in three different chapters, through an impact on a distant solar system. Abstract haiku-like situations reveal a planet’s change in atmosphere, which in turn is caused by the change of gravity and light. This pulsing planet makes its inhabitants become one with each other in various ways. Festivals and awards: 2016 - Berlin International Film Festival International premiere 2017 - Sundance Film Festival - In Competition Official selection at more than 100 film festivals worldwide Supported by the Media Patronage Programme of the Hungarian Media Council
THE NOISE OF LICKING (A nyalintás nesze) 9 min, 2015 Director: Nadja Andrasev Producer: József Fülöp Production company: Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design Budapest Festivals: zsbanyai@mome.hu Sales: klaudia.androsovits@filmalap.hu A woman is watched every day by the neighbour’s cat as she takes care of her exotic plants. Their perverted ritual comes to an end when the cat disappears. Time passes, the plants grow tall and the woman lives her life in content isolation until a peculiar man pays her a visit. Nadja Andrasev graduated from the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design in 2015 in the Animation Department before participating in the international animation workshop, Animation Sans Frontières. Festivals and awards: 2016 - Festival de Cannes - Cinéfondation Section, 3rd Prize 2016 - Festival international du film d’animation d’Annecy - In Competiton 2017 - Slamdance Film Festival - In Competition Supported by the Hungarian National Film Fund
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Short Animation
SUPERBIA
UNGVÁR
16 min, 2016
10 min, 2016
Director: Luca Tóth Producer: Péter Benjámin Lukács Production companies: Fakt Visual Lab, Maur Film, Artichoke, Boddah Festivals: danieldeak@daazo.com Sales: shorts@neweuropefilmsales.com
Director: Zoltán Áprily Animation director: Igor Lazin Producer: Károly Fehér Creative producer: Brigitta Iványi-Bitter Production company: Popfilm Festivals, sales: zaprily@gmail.com
The native people of the surrealistic land of Superbia, where men and women form separate societies, face the changes sparked by the first equal couple in the history of the land.
This is the decade when the last witnesses of the Second World War will pass away. Whatever they saw, whatever they went through, might from now on fade into fiction. In 1941, Hungary leased its ships to Germany. When the Germans needed them, the ships that previously served commercial purposes were converted into military use. One of them was called ‘Ungvár’. And the young waiter on the ship, full of hope and adventure, was my grandfather.
Luca Tóth got her BA diploma in Budapest at the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design and then went on to complete a Masters in England. As a graduate of the Animation Department at the Royal College of Art, she created ‘The Age of Curious’ in 2013, which won the Jury Distinction Prize in the Graduation Film category at the Festival international du film d’animation d’Annecy. Festivals and awards: 2016 - Cannes Semaine de la Critique - World Premiere 2016 - Helsinki International Film Festival, Love and Anarchy - Audience Award Official selection at more than 40 film festivals worldwide Supported by the Media Patronage Programme of the Hungarian Media Council
Zoltán Áprily studied film theory and film history in Budapest, and also graduated as director from the European Film College in Denmark. Together with Dániel Deák, he co-founded and run a short film distribution company, Daazo.com, for almost seven years. ‘Ungvár’ is his directorial debut and first animation. Festivals and awards: 2016 - Encounters Short Film Festival - In Competition
VOLCANO ISLAND 9 min, 2017 Director: Anna Kata Lovrity Producer: József Fülöp Production company: Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design Festivals: kati.vajda@filmalap.hu, marta.benyei@filmalap.hu, krisztina.orr@filmalap.hu glaser@mome.hu Sales: krisztina.orr@filmalap.hu A young, naive female tiger is chased by an old, white male tiger on a magical island. At the beginning of the story the tigress is not aware of her deep connection to the island and to nature. Finally she discovers her great, elementary force. Generation screening 12 Feb 14:00 CinemaxX 3 14 Feb 15:30 Filmtheater am Friedrichshain 18 Feb 09:30 Filmtheater am Friedrichshain
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Born in Budapest in 1990, Anna Katalin Lovrity is an independent animation filmmaker and illustrator. From 2010 to 2016 she attended the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design in Budapest, in the animation department, including spending a semester in 2012 in Ghent, Belgium, as part of the Erasmus programme. She is currently a participant in Animation Sans Frontières, the European animation production workshop.
Short Animation Series
BOXI
THE HOPPIES (Hoppi mesék)
13 x 4 min, 2013
13 x 7 min, 2016
Director: Béla Klingl Episode directors: Áron Gauder, Árpád Koós, Béla Klingl Producer: Béla Klingl Creative producer: Brigitta Iványi-Bitter Production company: KGB Stúdió Kft. Festivals, sales: mail@kgbstudio.hu
Directors: Ferenc Rofusz, Andrea Miskédi Producers: Ferenc Rofusz, Tamás Salusinszky Production company: The Hoppies Ltd. Festivals, sales: tamas.salusinszky@thehoppies.com
The strange stories of Boxi, the cardboard dog, and Cartommy, the cardboard boy, come to life in a child’s imaginary world, built from household waste. All of the characters in the series can actually be cut and folded from paper. Director Béla Klingl, who got his degree in design and animation, started making animated movies as a child by drawing frames on the edges of pages in books.
‘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 who live in Hoppiland and have a large calendar showing the international holidays happening on each day of the year. 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. Festivals and awards: 2015 - Anim!Arte Festival of Brazil – Special Mention Supported by the Media Patronage Programme of the Hungarian Media Council
TALES FROM THE LAKESIDE (Lengemesék) spring season: 7 episodes (various lengths), summer season: 6 episodes (various lengths), 2015 Director: Zsolt Pálfi Producer: Réka Temple Production company: Cinemon Entertainment Studio Festivals: kati.vajda@filmalap.hu, marta.benyei@filmalap.hu Sales: klaudia.androsovits@filmalap.hu ‘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. Supported by the Media Patronage Programme of the Hungarian Media Council.
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1945 drama, 2017, 91 min
Strangled psychologial thriller, 2016, 120 min
On a sweltering August day in 1945, villagers prepare for the wedding of the town clerk’s son. Meanwhile, two Orthodox Jews arrive at the village train station with mysterious boxes labelled "fragrances." The town clerk fears the men may be heirs of the village’s deported Jews and expects them to demand their unjustly acquired property back, originally lost during the Second World War. Other villagers are afraid more survivors will come, posing a threat to the property and possessions they have claimed as their own.
Based on real-life events, this psycho-thriller is set in the provincial Hungary of the 1960s, when a series of atrocious murders shock the small town of Martfű. A psychotic killer is on the prowl, who continues to slaughter young women while an innocent man is wrongly accused and sentenced for crimes he could never have committed. A determined detective arrives on the scene and soon becomes obsessed with the case while under pressure from the prosecutor to see a man hang.
Market screening 12 Feb 11:10 CinemaxX 19
Market screening 12 Feb 09:00 CinemaxX 19
Panorama screenings 12 Feb 20:15 CineStar 3 14 Feb 19:30 Zoo Palast 2 15 Feb 20:00 CinemaxX 7 16 Feb 22:45 CineStar 3 17 Feb 20:15 Cubix 7 & 8
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HNFF WORLD SALES | EFM LINE-UP HIGHLIGHTS
The Citizen drama, 2016, 110 min
Coyote drama, 2017, 127 min
Soul Exodus documentary, 2016, 93 min
DORINA MARTINOVICS
Z S O LT A N G E R
DÉNES SZÁRAZ
WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY MADARÁSZ ISTI CAMERAMAN ANDRÁS NAGY MUSIC BY LUCIO GODOY & ADRIÁN FOULKES PRODUCTION DESIGNER BALÁZS HUJBER EDITED BY ZOLTÁN KOVÁCS SOUND BY GÁBOR BALÁZS PRODUCER TAMÁS HUTLASSA THE FILM HAS BEEN MADE IN ASSOCIATION WITH THE HUNGARIAN NATIONAL FILM FUND. PRODUCED BY CAFÉ FILM 2016 © HUROK FILM
Kills on Wheels action comedy, 2016, 105 min
Well crime/drama, 2016, 97 min
Loop suspense/thriller, 2016, 95 min
MEET US IN BERLIN EFM stand: Martin-Gropius-Bau #149
HNFF World Sales | klaudia.androsovits@filmalap.hu | hnffworldsales.com
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MEET US IN BERLIN European Film Market
Stand name: Hungarian National Film Fund Stand number: 149 Telephone number: +49 30 206 033 420 Ágnes Havas (CEO) havas.agnes@filmalap.hu Csaba Bereczki (Eurimages representative, International director) csaba.bereczki@filmalap.hu Kati Vajda (Festival manager) kati.vajda@filmalap.hu Csaba Papp (Public relations) csaba.papp@filmalap.hu HNFF WORLD SALES Klaudia Androsovits (Sales manager) klaudia.androsovits@filmalap.hu
Published by
Hungarian National Film Fund (MNF)
Editors-in-chief:
Dániel Deák, Gábor Osváth
Editors:
Laura Brown, Zsuzsanna Deák, Veronika Jakab
Contributors:
Bori Bujdosó, Géza Csákvári, Dániel Deák, Ágnes Gurubi, Zsolt Gyenge, Zsófia Herczeg, Veronika Jakab, Gábor Osváth, Janka Pozsonyi
Original Art Concept: Tünde Kálmán Art director:
Zoltán Bukovics
Photographer:
Gábor Valuska
Proofreader:
Laura Brown
Hungarian Film Magazine is published by Hungarian National Film Fund. Published in Hungary February 2017. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or part is forbidden save with the written permission of the publishers. On the cover: Actress Alexandra Borbély from 'On Body and Soul' by Ildikó Enyedi www.issuu.com/hungarianfilm www.filmfund.hu www.facebook.com/hungarianfilmmagazine
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