Hungarian Film - Berlinale 2019

HUNGARIAN

FILM MAGAZINE THE 2019 BERLINALE ISSUE

Andrew G. Vajna 1944-2019 Animation on So Many Levels Hungarians at the Berlinale Shorts, Ruben Brandt Collecting Prizes

Legends Returning to Berlin Published by

Márta Mészáros and Béla Tarr at Berlinale

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PRESENTS

PREMIERE: TUESDAY, 12.02., 19.00, CINEMAXX 8 (WORLD PREMIERE OF THE RESTORED VERSION) REPETITION: WEDNESDAY, 13.02., 12.30, CINEMAXX 9

ADOPTION ÖRÖKBEFOGADÁS

DIRECTED BY

MÁRTA MÉSZÁROS

4K RESTORED VERSION SCREENPLAY BY MÁRTA MÉSZÁROS, GYULA HERNÁDI, FERENC GRUNWALSKY DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: LAJOS KOLTAI CAST: KATI BEREK, GYÖNGYVÉR VÍGH, PÉTER FRIED, LÁSZLÓ SZABÓ, FLÓRA KÁDÁR, LÁSZLÓ BOROSS, ERZSI VARGA

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A restauration by

MEMORIES AND FUTURE Each year is full of new projects and creative ideas for Hungarian Film. 2018 entitled us to great hope: Hungarian films received 1 million viewers in local cinemas and participated successfully at more than 100 festivals worldwide, including Sundance, Berlin, Karlovy Vary, Locarno, Cannes and Sarajevo – just to name a few. The short film Siege won the Bronze Student Oscar, and there are a handful of Hungarian productions in the pipeline which we hope to see at top festivals in the near future. We started 2019 with many new plans.

Suddenly, however, we all had to stop on 20 January, when the sad news came that government commissioner Andy Vajna passed away. His devotion and hard work led the Hungarian film industry out of a deep crisis eight years ago. Two Oscars have been brought home since and Hungarian films have premiered at the most important festivals worldwide, Hungarian moviegoers started to appreciate Hungarian films again. However, we stopped for a moment, on that gloomy Sunday to think about Andy who passed away unexpectedly , but – in the spirit of Andy’s approach – we continued working with the same enthusiasm the following day, and we will always remember him as one of the greatest film professionals in Hungary and around the world.

Many Hungarian talents’ careers began at the Berlinale – and now two animation directors, Anna Flóra Buda and Luca Tóth, are in the competition of the Berlinale Shorts. Hungarian animations reflect exceptional Hungarian talent: creativity is accompanied by universal thoughts and various techniques with strong artistic approaches.

Moreover, Anna Flóra and Luca are the new representatives of a significant group of female animation directors (along with the Berlinale and Cannes alumni Nadja Andrasev and Réka Bucsi) who bring “girl power” to this recently very gendersensitive industry.

The 69th Berlinale is not only about discovering new talents, though; it is also about screening restored masterpieces. Speaking of female directors, Márta Mészáros directed the most important films about women’s life in Hungary. Her film, Adoption won the Golden Bear in 1975 and will be screened again at the Berlinale Classics this year.

Furthermore, the longest Hungarian feature – and one of the most exciting ones ever made – is Béla Tarr’s Sátántangó, whose 7 hours of cinematic art at its best launched its unique career at the Berlinale Forum in 1994. Now, 25 years later, a new 4K restored version will be screened here in Berlin to confirm the film is a timeless, marvellous masterpiece.

Though with a few teardrops in our eye, we face 2019 with great optimism and look forward to the challenges of the following years.

Ágnes Havas CEO Hungarian National Film Fund

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CONTENT 3

OPENING WORDS FROM THE CEO OF THE HUNGARIAN NATIONAL FILM FUND

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IN MEMORIAM ANDREW G. VAJNA

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THE HUNGARIAN FILM COMMUNITY

10 NEWS 12

MILLION VIEWERS: HUNGARIAN CINEMA IN 2018

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PROJECTS SUPPORTED BY THE HUNGARIAN NATIONAL FILM FUND

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READY, SET, FAST FORWARD!

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PROMISING STORIES GET THE CHANCE TO BECOME FILMS

The Winning Projects of the HNFF’s Incubator Program

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BUDAPEST GOES VIRAL: WHEN CELEBRITIES FILM IN BUDAPEST

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TERMINATOR AND CO.

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AN ENTERTAINING JOURNEY THROUGH THE ARTS AND GENRES

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FROM BERLIN TO BERLIN

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HOW CAN YOU LOVE?

Looking back at the second year of the initiative

The Hungarian Service Film Industry is Booming Ruben Brandt, Collecting Prizes from All Over the World

Interview with Luca Tóth, participant of Berlinale Shorts

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A PERSON WORKING ON SO MANY LEVELS

Interview with Anna Flóra Buda, participant of Berlinale Shorts

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SEVEN HOURS WITHOUT A WASTED MOMENT

How Sátántangó conquered the world

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FLAT-OUT MASTERPIECE: RESTORED SÁTÁNTANGÓ DEBUTS AT THE BERLINALE

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THE MÁRTA MÉSZÁROS MARVEL

Adoption at the Berlinale Classics

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A WOMAN WHO WANTS TO LIVE AND TO GIVE LIFE

Interview with Márta Mészáros

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COMING SOON

Upcoming Films of Various Genres and Authors, Much-Awaited First Features and Comebacks

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NEW FILMS FROM HUNGARY

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FEATURE FILM

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TV DRAMA

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FEATURE DOCUMENTARY

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TV DOCUMENTARY

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EDUCATIONAL DOCUMENTARY

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SHORT FILM

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SHORT ANIMATION

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SHORT ANIMATION SERIES

ANDREW G. VAJNA 1944-2019

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The international and Hungarian film industries are in shock and misery: Andrew G. Vajna, the government film commissioner, initiator and strategic creator of the Hungarian National Film Fund and producer of blockbusters like Rambo, Terminator and Music Box, has died at the age of 74 in his home in Budapest.

Vajna produced nearly 60 films, including Sylvester Stallone’s first three Rambo films, the Golden Bear winner Music Box, and Evita starring Madonna. He worked with directors such as Oliver Stone and James Cameron and with actors like Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Anthony Hopkins, Gary Oldman, Michael Douglas, Robert de Niro, Demi Moore, Sharon Stone and Scarlett Johansson.

The Hungarian National Film Fund noted that Vajna never forgot his Hungarian roots and always kept an eye on what was happening in the Hungarian film industry. During his period as a government commissioner, Hungarian films like Son of Saul, On Body and Soul, 1945, Notebook and White God saw great international success, while a great number of films such as Kincsem – Bet on Revenge and The Whiskey Bandit, were enjoyed by over a million domestic viewers.

“Andy Vajna was a true film professional whose competence, devotion and hard work led the Hungarian film industry out of a deep crisis eight years ago. He became a top American producer, but he wanted to give back as much knowledge and expertise as he could to the film industry of his home country. He became a government film commissioner in 2011; he was a workaholic with endless creativity, relentless consistency, great enthusiasm and an excellent sense of humour.

We at the Hungarian Film Fund will continue working in the same spirit. I will miss him both professionally and personally.” – commemorated Ágnes Havas, the CEO of the HNFF, in a tribute to Andy Vajna.

“Andy Vajna has recreated the Hungarian film landscape,” stated László Nemes, the director of the Oscar-winner Son of Saul, for Screen International. “His devotion and unquestionable expertise drove Hungary to the forefront of the international film industry again. I will always remember Andy with respect and gratitude.”

“Over the forty years I knew Andy Vajna our paths crossed several times,” said Péter Miskolczi, the Hungarian producer of Taxidermia and Simon, the Magician. “Even though we sometimes disagreed on a number of issues, it never spoiled our relationship because he was always open to honest professional discussions.”

“I think one of the most important things that Andy Vajna has left us is the principle that you don’t have to - nor should you - always agree when it comes to collaboration,” continues Viktória Petrányi, the long-time creative partner of Kornél

Mundruczó, the producer of films like Jupiter’s Moon and White God. “With Andy you could debate and you could think differently and still respect each other’s know-how. He founded such a stable institution, one that held the principle of professionalism in highest regard, which is huge in our public life full of contradictions and political discourses. He drove the growth of the industry, which we are all now responsible for. In practice he represented that openness, diversity and independence that we as filmmakers will always cling to and without which there is no cultural life.

We will honour his legacy by keeping that principle in mind.”

“Andy had a strong and powerful vision but it didn’t blind him and he gave place and opportunity to other visions as well. Both are rare virtues,” agrees Golden Bear-winner Ildikó Enyedi, the director of On Body and Soul. “The sincere friendship and mutual trust between Ágnes Havas and Andy Vajna resulted in years of a strong, multifaceted, daring and colourful landscape in Hungarian cinema. When he arrived to Hungary, Vajna implemented his extensive knowledge of cinema in a deeply different cultural and industrial environment with unique success, because he knew the main rules of our beloved profession: openness, curiosity and respect of quality.”

“When I first met Andy, he already had several decades of experience, international success and many prominent awards up his sleeve. I was just starting my carreer as a filmmaker looking to make my first movie for the big screen. But that didn’t deter Andy from talking to me as if I was a business partner from the get-go, because it was always the idea, the work put in and a good film opportunity that interested him,” remembers Márk Bodzsár, the director of Heavenly Shift and Comrade Draculich. “He was open, helpful and never judgemental. And a perfectionist. Not only did he demand a lot but he was also always prepared to give professional and financial support. When the Film Fund voted in favour of my film plan I became a first-time filmmaker in an environment that was not at all the norm for a first-timer; on the contrary, I was welcomed to work in a professional system. I have a lot to thank Andy for that. And not only me: Andy’s approach gave a new basis for Hungarian film production and he brought numerous outstanding films to life.”  Text by Anita Libor

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THE HUNGARIAN FILM COMMUNITY Find out more about Hungary’s recent success in cultural and industrial film: local films reached more than 1 million viewers, Hungarian service film industry is booming, international celebrities are filming in Budapest.

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PROTON AT THE BERLINALE CO-PRODUCTION MARKET The 16th edition of the Berlinale Co-Production Market will take place from 9 to 13 February, with 37 new feature film projects to be pitched to the many industry guests. Proton Cinema, one of the leading forces in the Hungarian film industry, was selected as one of five companies to be represented at the Company Matching part of the Co-Production Market, where roughly 600 participants will get the chance to meet with them.

The company, led by the producer Viktória Petrányi, is probably best known for producing all of Kornél Mundruczó’s films including White God and Jupiter’s Moon. Proton’s most recent feature, Guerilla, directed by debut filmmaker György Mór Kárpáti, had its world premiere at the Göteborg Film Festival in January. Proton Cinema also does a lot of service work, and their rich resume includes films such as Brimstone and The White King.

Petrányi recently co-produced The Song of Names starring Clive Owen and Tim Roth.

The Song of Names

LÉA SEYDOUX TO STAR IN ENYEDI’S NEW FILM The 2017 Golden Bear winner Ildikó Enyedi (On Body and Soul) readies her new feature film The Story of My Wife. The adaptation of the classic novel by the Hungarian author Milán Füst is a long-planned dream project for Enyedi, and she will have a stellar cast to help carry out her vision: French actress Léa Seydoux (known for such films as Blue is the Warmest Colour and The Lobster) will play the lead opposite Norway’s Anders Baasmo Christiansen (of Kon-Tiki and The King’s Choice). Further casting is to be announced soon, with filming to commence in spring this year.

Hungary’s Inforg-M&M is the main company behind the film (producers Mónika Mécs, András Muhi and Ernő Mesterházy), which is being co-produced with Germany’s Komplizen Film, France’s Pyramide Productions and Italy’s Dorje Film. Eurimages supported the project with 500 000 euros and the Hungarian National Film Fund granted it 3.15 million euros.

Meeting of The Story of My Wife’s Crew

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WILLOW: A FOUR-COUNTRY CO-PRODUCTION The sixth feature film by the Academy Awards-nominated Macedonian film director Milcho Manchevski, Willow, is being made in a rare, four-country co-production. The Macedonian-Albanian-Belgian-Hungarian movie recounts two and a half love stories spanning four centuries.

The Before the Rain filmmaker’s new film is supported by the Macedonian Film Agency, the Hungarian National Film Fund, the Albanian National Centre of Cinematography and the Bulgarian National Film Centre. The Hungarian co-producer is Pioneer’s Ildikó Kemény, and Hungarian contributions in the film include the cinematographer (Tamás Dobos) and the costume designer (Györgyi Szakács).

Willow

ZSÓFI TASNÁDI IS OUR TALENT IN BERLIN The production designer Zsófi Tasnádi will represent Hungary at this year’s Berlinale Talents. Once again, this spectacular event will include several workshops, masterclasses and networking opportunities for the selected talents.

Zsófi Tasnádi’s most recent work as a production designer was Gábor Reisz’s sophomore feature Bad Poems and last year’s Student Academy Award-nominated short film Earthly People by Ádám Freund. Tasnádi’s credits include the short films by Fanni Szilágyi, including End of Puberty which debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival.

She also works as an art director – most notably in Kornél Mundruczó’s Jupiter’s Moon.

Zsófi Tasnádi

A total of 250 young filmmakers will participate this year at Berlinale Talents, representing a whopping 77 countries.

HUNGARIAN DOCS GO TO ZAGREB Hungarian documentary filmmakers are more and more visible – this is largely thanks to the University of Theatre and Film Arts (SZFE) offering documentary MA studies.

The Hungarian National Film Fund’s Incubator Program also makes it easier to make debut feature docs.

The Divas

Two new projects have now been selected to ZagrebDox Pro, one of the most important workshops of the industry.

Hungary is the only country to have not one but two projects in competition this year. Both of the participants are graduating from SZFE’s documentary class this year: Máté Kőrösi and Réka Ugron will present their projects The Divas and Predators, respectively, in Zagreb late February.  11

MILLION VIEWERS: HUNGARIAN FILMS IN 2018 Hungarian audiences are still hungry for domestic movies, which had a great year in cinemas as well as on television: more than 1 million tickets were sold to new and classical Hungarian films screening in local cinemas in 2018, and 26 million people watched the films on television.

2018 was a good year for Hungarian comedy as well: the greatest success again goes to Gábor Herendi, just as in 2017. After Kincsem, the director revisited his crowdpleaser A Kind of America for the third time: the third episode was released in February and 372 000 tickets were sold, making A Kind of America 3 the most-watched Hungarian film in 2018 and the second-most-watched film of the past five years. (The Hungarian National Film Fund’s best bet was making a film about a Hungarian racehorse: Kincsem - Bet on Revenge’s 456 000 viewers is still an unbeatable record, even for the same director.)

By the end of the year, Kriszta Goda’s Hungarian, New Year’s Eve-framed version of Paolo Genovese’s Perfect Strangers had collected almost 240 000 viewers, becoming a great critical and box office success. In third place was another Hungarian comedy, proving that the Hungarian public was open to Orsolya Nagypál’s debut about sexual encounters: Open received almost 55 000 viewers in 2018.

Serious art-house dramas also found their way to their audience: 2018’s surprise success was One Day by Zsófia Szilágyi. The first feature was developed under the Incubator Program of the Hungarian National Film Fund and is the story about 40-year-old Anna with three children and an unfaithful husband. The film won the prestigious Fipresci award at the Cannes Film Festival, where it was screened in the Critics’ Week selection.

Critics praised the film’s unique style and theme, and Hungarian viewers (and critics) were also very welcoming of it.

A Kind of America

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Bad Poems

Academy Award-winner László Nemes second feature, Sunset, had its international premiere at the Venice Film Festival where it won the prestigious Fipresci award. The North American premiere was held in September at the Toronto IFF. The film reached almost 50 000 viewers in Hungary and was sold to several countries around the world. Bad poems is also a great return for the Hungarian helmer Gábor Reisz; his first debut film, For Some Inexplicable Reason, was a great international and domestic success, and his second direction had its international premiere in Tallinn, won three prizes in Torino and, few weeks after its premiere it is still collecting fans, reaching 40 000 admissions in Hungary so far.

2018 was also important for films like X - the eXploited, a Hungarian crime thriller that proved to be a favourite at film festivals such as in Warsaw, Chicago and Ghent, winning the main prize at Braunschweig International Film Festival.

Although Károly Ujj-Mészáros’ second feature after Liza, the Fox-Fairy is a completely different genre, a dark crime story with some recent political tones, it reached more than 36 000 admissions.

Milorad Krstic delivered one of the best success stories of the year (see our story on page 36). His long-awaited animation movie, Ruben Brandt, Collector, had its international premiere in Locarno, where enthusiastic critics warmly welcomed the movie, and later in the year domestic audiences also applauded the film. Ruben Brandt was on every ‘best of’ list in 2018: the nightmarish art-caricature

film has also been a great success overseas. Film festivals were a great place for Hungarian cinema in 2018: Genezis (dir: Árpád Bogdán) made its international debut at the Berlinale’s Panorama section, Blossom Valley (dir: László Csuja) won the East of the West main prize in Karlovy Vary, and Locarno and Sarajevo were filled with Hungarian premieres (Bálint Kenyeres’ Hier, Dorottya Zurbó’s Easy Lessons, László Csuja’s Nine Month War), and His Master’s Voice (dir: György Pálfi) had its international premiere in Tokyo.

However, 2018 was not just about 2018. Some of 2017’s greatest successes (The Whiskey Bandit, On Body and Soul) also collected more than 100 000 viewers last year as well, and thanks to the digitalisation programme of the Hungarian National Film Fund, many Hungarian film classics were screened in cinemas again, like My XXth Century, The Witness and Stars of Eger - classic Hungarian movies altogether saw more than 45 000 viewers.

Also, many had the chance to see Hungarian films on television throughout the year: 26 million viewers watched The Whiskey Bandit, Pappa Pia, Coming Out, Strangled and A Kind of America 3 and a wide selection of classical movies.

Sunset

Happy New Year

X-The eXploited

One Day

What’s in store for 2019?

2019 will also be a great year for Hungarian comedy: films like Flat for Fun (dir: Kata Dobó), which is set to screen on Valentine’s Day, is expected to be a success, as well as the new rom-com entitled Mimi from Dénes Orosz, the director of Poligamy and Coming Out. A wartime love story called Tall Tales from the helmer Attila Szász could become a sleeper hit for audiences, just as Comrade Draculich could, the second feature from the director of Heavenly Shift, Márk Bodzsár. Two female directors: Nóra Lakos and Cecilia Felméri, are about to make their debuts: Cream is about a woman whose life seems to have slipped past her, and Spiral is a dark story about relationships. Art house fans can enjoy Ágnes Kocsis’ return (Eden) as well as the new film by István Szabó (Final Report). New talents like Zoltán Nagy (IMPROMPTU), György Mór Kárpáti (Guerilla), Attila Hartung (FOMO - Fear of Missing Out), Ábel Visky (Tales from the Prison Cell) will have their debuts in 2019 - first features were developed in the frame of HNFF’s Incubator Program. 

Text by Anita Libor

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BEST OF 2018* TITLE

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ADMISSIONS

A Kind of America

372 367

Happy New Year

239 402

Open

54 950

Sunset

48 361

Bad Poems

40 600

Ruben Brandt, Collector

39 950

X – the eXploited

36 775

Lajkó - Gypsy in Space

33 227

One Day

22 987

The Butcher, the Whore and the One-Eyed Man

19 947 19 947

*As of January 2019

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Part of Nordic Entertainment Group

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

TV Documentary

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Short Animation

TV Film

Short and Experimental Film

Animated TV Series

Educational Documentaries

Online Content

More info: www.filmfund.hu

HOW CAN INTERNATIONAL CO-PRODUCTIONS APPLY TO THE HUNGARIAN NATIONAL FILM FUND?

There is no separate call for minority co-productions, but all projects with Hungarian story elements and/or Hungarian crew are encouraged to apply with a Hungarian co-producer on board.

APPLICATIONS

Script Development

Project Development

Production

APPLICATION PROCESS

Continuous Applications (No fixed deadlines)

Decision in 60 days (with feedback from readers and the decision of the Committee) 17

SUPPORTED IN 2018

BY THE HUNGARIAN NATIONAL FILM FUND In 2018, the Hungarian National Film Fund gave production grants to 22 projects for a sum of 16.9 million euros – a significant increase compared to 2017 when 11 projects received 12.5 million euros.

The biggest amount was given to Ildikó Enyedi, whose new film The Story of My Wife received 3.15 million euros. The director’s follow-up to her Golden Bear-winning On Body and Soul will star two European superstars: France’s Léa Seydoux and Norway’s Anders Baasmo Christiansen.

The second-biggest amount went to Péter Bergendy’s Post Mortem, a ghost story set in the 1910s, which received 1.88 million euros. The Oscarwinning filmmaker István Szabó was granted 1.64 million euros for Final Report (‘Zárójelentés’), which reunited him with the Austrian actor Klaus Maria Brandauer, already the star of several films by Szabó, including Mephisto. Péter Gothár, another veteran of Hungarian cinema, is also making a return: 1.1 million euros was given to the prolific director’s Seven Little Coincidences (‘Hét kis véletlen’), his 10th film and his first in more than 15 years.

A total of six low-budget debut features of the Incubator Program received funding in 2018: four live action fictions, one documentary and one animation.

Two other documentaries also received funding in 2018: Eszter Hajdú, the filmmaker behind Judgement in Hungary, is now making a film about Tamás Barta, the rock legend who mysteriously died in the United States; while Róbert Lakatos

Willow

Text by Gábor Osváth

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(‘Ki kutyája vagyok én?’) is making his new doc in a Hungarian-Romanian co-production.

Two minority coproductions received funding in 2018 from the HNFF: Josef Demian’s The Night Watch (‘Éjjeli őrjárat’) will be a RomanianHungarian co-production, while the Academy award-nominated director Milcho Manchevski’s ‘Willow’ is a Macedonian-Albanian-BelgianHungarian co-production.

Project development grants were awarded to 11 projects, three of which have already been moved into production. The other projects include new movies directed by János Szász, Gábor Herendi and Balázs Lóth.

Script development grants were presented to a total of 49 projects – compared to only 30 last year. Writers and directors to have received this support include a wide range of filmmakers, including György Pálfi, Attila Till, Attila Gigor, Tibor Kocsis, László Csuja and many more.

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 Friss Hús Budapest Short Film Festival all received support from the HNFF, as did the Student Academy Award presence for the short film A Siege. As a matter of course, the three biggest film schools (University of Theatre and Film Arts of Budapest, MoholyNagy University of Art and Design and Eötvös Loránd University) received support for their students’ graduation movies. 

Final Report; Photo by Emil Novák

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

FROM ANY OF THESE CATEGORIES?

Feature Film

Animation Film

Documentary Film

Experimental Film

TV Film

Short Film

WHAT CAN HUNGARY PROVIDE FOR YOU? More info: www.filmfund.hu

30%

TAX REBATE

OF YOUR OVERALL PRODUCTION SPENDINGS * Max. 1.25x of the Hungarian spend HUNGARIAN SPEND

NON-HUNGARIAN SPEND

BUDGET

1 000 000

0

BUDGET

800 000

200 000

BUDGET

600 000

BUDGET

200 000

400 000

800 000

BASIS OF THE TAX REBATE*

1 000 000

1 000 000

30% TAX REBATE

300 000

300 000

750 000

225 000

250 000

75 000

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Masterclass by Peter Greenaway / Photo by Gábor Valuska

READY, SET, FAST FORWARD! 2018 was an exciting year for the Hungarian film industry: Kate McKinnon rapped in Hungarian on the Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon, Will Smith danced on top of the Chain Bridge, as part of his Keke challenge, and Arnold Schwarzenegger was giving constant live feeds from Hungarian gyms.

All three came to work and shoot in Budapest, one of continental Europe’s most popular destinations for international productions. Last year, the Hungarian National Film Fund raised the tax rebate from 25% to 30%, making Hungary even more attractive for foreign filmmakers.

Hungary therefore needs film professionals now more than ever. That’s why, in 2017, the Hungarian National Film Fund initiated the Fast Forward Program, an innovative series of lectures and practice-oriented workshops to help junior industry professionals and film students keep up with the ongoing demand. It was an experiment in many aspects to invite film scholars, tutors and professionals from all over the world to present their expertise to the Hungarian industry.

AND THE RESULT? Until today: 22 workshops 16 specialties 54 days almost 300 hours more than 1800 participants The experiment has clearly worked: international talents held lectures and seminars on film writing, script developing, pitching, scriptwriting, film acting and post-production etc.

Text by Anita Libor

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In 2018 the Fast Forward Program collaborated with the Budapest Classic Film Marathon and invited Katinka Faragó, the long-time creative partner of Ingmar Bergman and Andrei Tarkovsky, and Viktória Petrányi the producer and creative partner of Kornél Mundruczó to talk about their experience of creative partnership in the filmmaking process. The Program cooperated also with the Budapest Showcase Hub and offered a lecture and workshop on music supervising and film music composing by Thomas Golubic, the music supervisor of ie. Breaking Bad and Six Feet Under and Ádám Balázs, the composer of a score for the Berlinale 2017 Golden Bear winning On Body and Soul and Sing, the Oscar-winner live action short. Inviting the visionary British filmmaker Peter Greenaway, director of films like The Draughtsman’s Contract, The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover or The Pillow Book for a masterclass was also a succcesful collaboration between Republic Group’s Budapest Zeitgeist and the Fast Forward Program.

In the fall Kurt van der Basch who worked on films and videoclips from Everything is Illuminated through Madonna’s Sweet and Sticky tour to Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom shared his experiences on storyboard-making; talents from 3D animation and the CGI industry, József Czakó and Attila Szigeti (Digic Pictures), invited participants to a reality where anything can happen; and Noemi Schory from Israel held a lecture on the future of documentaries. Film marketing continued to be an important component of this year: John Durie together with the Hungarian specialist Anna Bartók put forward case studies about recent

Hungarian blockbusters ie. The Whiskey Bandit and A Kind of America 3. Even the Berlinale was a guest of the Fast Forward Program, as Nikolaj Nikitin, the long-time selector for the festival, came to Budapest for a lecture and a workshop about film festival strategies.

In February Miguel Machalski talked about storytelling in film, about what makes a story a story and, more importantly, what makes it a story worth telling, over and above visual artistry and filmic aesthetics.

STILL TO COME IN 2019

Kurt van der Basch / Photo by Norbert Kis

Sibylle Kurz will be arriving to Budapest after the Berlinale to give a lecture on the importance and cruel reality of pitching and an intensive workshop for the participants of this year’s Incubator Program.

Anders Kjaerhauge, from Zentropa will be bringing hands-on knowledge on how to deal with clearance issues in real life and the legal problems of filmmaking; Joost de Vries and Dennis Kleyn from the Netherlands will give a comprehensive introduction to the basic techniques of visual effects in film and television series and will also address the creative implementation of VFX as a narrative tool; and similarly to the 2017- 2018 year Steven Lovy and László Pistár’s hands-on workshop on movie trailers will be closing the year.

The FFP continues with more exciting events, and for those who missed the lectures, video recordings can be accessed online, on the youtube channel of the Hungarian National Film Fund. 

Workshop by Noemi Shoery / Photo by Bálint Hrotkó

MORE ON EDUCATION AND TRAINING To alleviate the shortage and to increase the competitiveness of local film production, a complex initiative called the Film Training Program was launched by the Film Fund in 2016. The legal and financial foundation of the programme was outlined in the Motion Picture Act the same year, according to which productions receiving indirect financial support in Hungary are to contribute to the film training fund. The act sets a 0.5% levy and also obliges productions over HUF 10 million to employ interns.

Kurt van der Basch / Photo by János Posztós

Filmesgyakornok.hu is the Film Fund’s website, channelling students and newcomers into the internships of running film productions. The site lists productions with avaailable placements and provides news and information about the film industry as well as educational opportunities. Producers can access a database of potential applicants by exploring their educational background and professional experience.

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Workshop by Thomas Golubic / Photo by János Posztós

PROMISING STORIES GET THE CHANCE TO BECOME LOW BUDGET FILMS

THE WINNING PROJECTS OF THE HNFF’S INCUBATOR PROGRAM The Hungarian National Film Fund’s Incubator Program was launched in 2015 to support talented young directors who have not yet made their first feature. During the past three years, over 200 film projects were submitted to the programme, and 14 young directors got the opportunity to make their debut feature films. Ágnes Havas, CEO of the HNFF, said that the growing number of applicants year after year is a clear sign of success. The Incubator Program not only helps make debut films but it is also a great platform to build a community for young and talented filmmakers who reflect on the world and on the activities and events around them.

Four of the 14 winning film projects were finished and premiered, and even more got several prestigious awards; five of them are currently under production and another four are in pre-production stage.

All of the four winning projects of the first Incubator Program are finished and only one of them hasn’t had its premiere yet. The first feature-length animation by Tibor Bánóczki and Sarolta Szabó,

Text by Zsófi Herczeg

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’White Plastic Sky’, is co-produced by the Hungarian Salto Film and the French Paprika Films and is expected to be in cinemas in 2020.

The utopian sci-fi takes place in 2200, when fertile soil has disappeared from the Earth and all flora and fauna has become extinct.

The population of the city survives by eating a special plant, which is implanted into people’s flesh after their 50th birthday. The psychiatrist Stefan strongly believes in this system until the day his wife signs up for volunteer implantation.

The first feature by Csaba Vékes, ’Behind the Column’, got premiered at the Montreal World Film Festival in 2017, ’One Day’ by Zsófia Szilágyi was the second production completed within the framework of the Incubator Program, and it had its international premiere at the Critics’ Week in Cannes in 2018, winning the FIPRESCI award.

The socio-realist lovers-on-the-run movie entitled ’Blossom Valley’, by László Csuja, debuted at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival’s East of the West Section in 2018 and won the Special Jury Prize. The documentary feature ’Easy Lessons’,

by Dorottya Zurbó, premiered at the Locarno International Film Festival in 2018.

The second Incubator Program was held in 2016 and the five winning projects will be premiered in 2019. The historical drama ’Guerilla’, by György Mór Kárpáti, will start its festival circle at the Göteborg Film Festival. Set in 1849 at the end of the liberation war against the Habsburg Empire, a young soldier tries to find and save his wounded brother who has been hiding with a guerilla group.

‘Tales from the Prison Cell’ by Ábel Visky is a creative documentary about the relationship between fathers in prison and their children at home. As a way of keeping in contact, the inmates wrote fairy tales for their kids, which the creators then made into films with the children playing the lead roles.

The documentary feature by Alexa Bakony, ’Tobias’, is about 16-year-old Jasmin, who feels that he is a boy who was born in a woman’s body.

Jasmin would like to start his life as Tobias, but he can’t transform until he turns eighteen. The film follows this frustrating period of the transgender boy and his relationship with his mother.

FOMO (’Fear of Missing Out’) by Attila Hartung puts the focus on Gergő and his teenage friends, who are into three things: partying, sex and how many online followers they have. One night, at a party, Lilla falls victim to the boys. A dare gets out of hand and the young boys’ world changes forever overnight.

A coming-of-age story, ’Impromptu’, by Zoltán Nagy, is set in the contemporary countryside, where irresponsible teenager Dávid must stand up for a 13-year-old girl who is being molested by their old music teacher.

The four chosen projects of the third Incubator Program are in pre-production stage. ’Things Worth Weeping For’ by Cristina Grosan and Nóra Rainer-Micsinyei is about people in their 30s who try to meet serious grown-up expectations when their lives do not actually have much in common with typical adulthood. The film intends to examine this controversial state that is full of conflict, tension, self-righteousness and absurd situations.

Inspired by the book by László Kozma, the animated adventure film entitled ‘Where did I go Wrong?’,

by Márton Szirmai, brings the focus to the writer, who is innocently sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Memorable and graphic stories of Kozma’s life come to life until he himself works out the perfect plan of escape. Set in 1950’s Hungary, it is an exciting and humorous film about how power and history can easily break a person’s ambitions and opportunities.

Ten selected filmmakers are currently working on their first projects to present them at this year’s pitch forum for Incubator Program held in 2019 spring. 

Hajni Kis’s biographically inspired film, ’A Pack of our Town’, shows the relationship between an ex-convict father and his teenage daughter. Their relationship is filled with conflict, but they slowly manage to break down their barriers and grow closer to each other, and the father realises that he never wants to leave his daughter again, and for that he is ready to take some radical steps.

The film by Bálint Nagy and Nándor Lőrincz, ’The Last Bus’, discusses the subject of sexual abuse from a husband’s point of view. A couple is finally given confirmation to adopt an orphan, but one night the wife is sexually abused by a stranger.

The couple faces the culture of victim-blaming, which also breaks the trust in their marriage.

The Last Bus won €25 000 for the post-production service fee at the Transilvania Pitch Stop.

One Day

Blossom Valley

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BUDAPEST GOES VIRAL WHEN CELEBRITIES FILM IN BUDAPEST, THEY KEEP POSTIN’ IT ON THEIR SOCIAL MEDIA. AND SOMETIMES IT GOES VIRAL!

WILL SMITH CLIMBS THE BRIDGE Will Smith posted several Budapest-set posts on his social media during his stay while filming Gemini Man, but it was the one he posted as a farewell present that really became memorable. Smith climbed the Hungarian capital’s oldest bridge, the Chain Bridge, and danced on top of it. The dangerous stunt was allegedly made without any permits - but it got 3.7 million views on Will’s Instagram page!

Will Smith

JAMIE FOXX PARTIES HARD While filming Robin Hood, Jamie Foxx was active both on social media and out on the town! According to several videos and posts, the Oscar-winner made the most of it during his stay in Budapest! His adventures included singing Sinatra’s My Way at a restaurant, going to a morning radio show or spontaneously DJ-ing at a party!

Not to mention the photo evidence of him working out in the Hungarian soccer team’s jersey!

Jamie Foxx Text by Gábor Osváth

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RUBY ROSE CARES The actress Ruby Rose was filming the action film SAS: Red Notice when she was admitted to hospital, where she was not happy with certain conditions. But her frightened Instagram stories quickly turned into proactive ones, and she spent quite a lot of money buying supplements and toys for the kids at Pál Heim Children’s Hospital!

Ruby Rose

SCHWARZENEGGER IS EVERYWHERE

Arnold Schwarzenegger

While filming the new Terminator movie, Arnold Schwarzenegger was all over town! Besides praising the Hungarian crew of Terminator in a “Behind the Scenes” video made by HNFF, he frequently posted during his bike rides or walks at random spots in Budapest. But the most memorable was probably when he visited Flex Gym and saw a picture of Will Smith taking a picture with a Terminator statue. Needless to say, Arnold posed with it and posted with the caption saying “Thanks to Will Smith for the training inspiration here in Budapest.” Classic Arnold!

CLAIRE DANES THE TOURIST Claire Danes filmed Homeland in Budapest, but she also had time to be a tourist. According to her Instagram, she visited many of the famous sites in the city and did not hesitate to post several pics from her trip.

Claire Danes

TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET IS M.I.A. Sadly for his young fans, Call Me By Your Name star Timothée Chalamet was mostly unseen during his stay in Hungary while filming The King, as the whole shoot took place in the countryside. He was rather inactive on his social media, but fans will be able to see much more of him when the young star comes back to film Dune!  Timothée Chalamet

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TERMINATOR AND CO. The Hungarian service film industry is booming, and in 2018 we welcomed more projects than ever before. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Will Smith, Timothée Chalamet and Antonio Banderas all made exciting projects here, but that is just the tip of the iceberg. Here is a quick look at what films and TV shows were made in our country last year.

Text by Gábor Osváth

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The Witcher

The Untitled Terminator Reboot is probably the biggest production that Hungary welcomed in 2018. Directed

by Deadpool-helmer Tim Miller, the monumental action film stars Arnold Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton. In close second is Ang Lee’s Gemini Man starring Will Smith, which will also heavily feature Budapest and other Hungarian locations. The two movies will be released in the United States in the fall.

The abovementioned films will be seen by millions, but the new Netflix film The King might have an even bigger audience thanks to the global streamer’s reach.

Directed by David Michôd (Animal Kingdom, The Rover), the film stars Timothée Chalamet as the title character of Henry V and Joel Edgerton as Falstaff.

The Song of Names

Earlier last year another prime director visited Hungary: Oscar-nominated Marjane Satrapi filmed Radioactive with Rosamund Pike in the role of Marie Curie. Another prestigious project made in Budapest is The Song of Names, directed by François Girard (The Red Violin) and starring Clive Owen and Tim Roth (Owen hardly left Budapest as he also co-stars in Gemini Man!).

The television projects were once again a big part of our service production industry. One of the most visible series was National Geographic’s Genius, which had a months-long shoot in Hungary with Antonio Banderas starring as Pablo Picasso. Recently the show was nominated for multiple Emmy and Golden Globe awards. At the latter, Banderas was nominated alongside Daniel Brühl who was competing with his performance in the spectacular series The Alienist, which was also made in Hungary.

Returning shows included Mars, Jamestown and The Last Kingdom, while new shows include many in the spy thriller genre: the TV series Hanna, a large part of the third season of Berlin Station, and also some of Homeland - starring Claire Danes, of course. And it was not only English-speaking shows – in the bigscale Hidden: Förstfödd, a Swedish fantasy-thriller series, Budapest plays modern-day Stockholm in a dark and twisted way.

Genius - Picasso

Hidden

Speaking of fantasy, The Witcher could be the next big event series – and it is currently being filmed in Hungary for Netflix. Based on the popular books and videogames, the series stars Superman himself, Henry Cavill. The show is set to debut later this year, and we hope many more seasons will be filmed in Hungary!

But the near future is already full with exciting projects.

On top of the list is the new Dune movie, which is now being prepped. This will be director Denis Villeneuve’s second lengthy stay in Hungary, as he previously filmed the entire Blade Runner 2049 in and around Budapest.

Dune will star Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson and Stellan Skarsgård.  Berlin Station

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AN ENTERTAINING JOURNEY THROUGH ARTS, ACTION, HUMOUR AND GENRES

RUBEN BRANDT, COLLECTOR The first animated feature to be fully supported by the Hungarian National Film Fund is Ruben Brandt, Collector, a thriller with a unique visual world by Milorad Krstić. After several years of mostly insignificant Hungarian animated features that fluctuated in quality, it was a great success for both the press and the animation industry, as well as for the audience.

After the fall of the communist regime, not only did financial support collapse, but the Hungarian animation industry was rearranged as well. In the last 30 years, few Hungarian animated features have been made, and a large part of them has been far behind in quality of the masterpieces of the previous period.

The first animated feature to be fully supported by the HNFF is Ruben Brandt, Collector, which premiered last year. If we look forward, only two animated features are in production, and both are supported by the HNFF’s Incubator Program: the utopian sci-fi in French co-production, White Plastic Sky, by Tibor Bánóczki and Sarolta Szabó, and a surreal animated adventure, Where did I go Wrong?, by Márton Szirmai.

Ruben Brandt, Collector was written, directed and designed by Milorad Krstić, a Slovenia-born artist who has been living in Hungary for nearly 30 years. The film’s crew teamed up with almost 100 Hungarians, and the English sync was recorded with the voices of Hungarian

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actors as well – as the director puts it, “to be more international”. The film was produced by Péter Miskolczi, Radmila Roczkov, Hermina Roczkov and János Kurdy-Fehér, the music was composed by Tibor Cári, and the main voice actors were Iván Kamarás, Gabriella Hámori and Zalán Makranczi.

Ruben Brandt is the first feature animation by Krstić; until now his biggest success was his short film My Baby Left Me, which in 1995 won the Silver Bear at the Berlinale and the Award for the Best First Film at the Annecy International Film Festival.

As Krstić said in an interview for Cartoon Brew about Ruben Brandt, it was made “as an audiovisual symphony”. On Indiewire, he explains the multi-layered story he intended to make: “I tried to make the first layer a crime story for the everyday person to follow, and then there’s the more complicated psychological aspects, choreographed like a dance with varying rhythms and movements. […] Sometimes I followed the painting, and other times I followed the story that’s identified with the painting. […] And some things I did were homages to directors”, like Sergei Eisenstein, Akira Kurosawa, David Lynch or Alfred Hitchcock. The film therefore mixes the elements of genres like thriller, noir, action-adventure film, heist film and even horror, with which Krstić clearly targeted the young adult/ adult audiences with his visual feast.

The film tells the story about Ruben Brandt, a famous psychotherapist who is forced to steal 13 paintings from world-renowned museums and private collections to prevent his suffering from terrible nightmares. Accompanied by four of his patients, including the femme fatale Mimi, he and his gang of thieves strike regularly and with great success: Louvre, Tate, Uffizi, Hermitage, MoMA. ‘The Collector’ quickly becomes the most wanted criminal. Gangsters and headhunters chase him around the world while the reward for his capture keeps rising, approaching 100 million dollars.

A carter of insurance companies entrusts Mike Kowalski, a private detective and leading art theft expert, to solve the case.

Ruben Brandt was premiered last year at the Locarno Festival’s open-air venue, the Piazza Grande with its 8000 seats. It was the first time for a Hungarian movie. The international critics praised Krstić’s film after the first screening. The Hollywood Reporter says that Ruben Brandt, Collector “is first and foremost a rollicking and very imaginatively staged ride that’s enjoyable and different.” Variety writes that “the multi-hyphenate Milorad Krstić literally puts the ‘art’ in ‘arthouse’, using 2D and 3D animation techniques to depict the tropes of film noir and action-adventure, all the while paying clever homage to the worlds of film and fine art.”

Deadline praises Ruben Brandt like it “is almost indescribable in its level of ambition and imagination, an impassioned pastiche of genre elements that pays homage to the hundreds of artists that have consumed the helmer throughout his life.” Ruben

Brandt was awarded three times at the Seville European Film Festival, including the Best First Film award by the CICAE Jury, who chose Krstić’s film because it “is not only a wonderful, surprising work, it is also a real triumph of the senses. This is an animation with an original, unique aesthetic and a conceptual philosophy that will leave its mark, one that from now on cannot be disregarded for an intelligent, pure, genuine entertainment.”

During the international screenings, Sony Pictures Classics, which had distributed László Nemes’ Academy Award-winning Son of Saul as well as his second feature Sunset in America, acquired all rights to Ruben Brandt, Collector in North America and in Latin America. SPC had the rights to distribute animations like The Triplets of Belleville by Sylvain Chomet, Paprika by Satoshi Kon, Persepolis

by Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud, Waltz with Bashir by Ari Folman and The Red Turtle by Michaël Dudok de Wit. Four of these films were nominated for the Academy Awards. Ruben Brandt, Collector was among the 25 full-length animations that were submitted to the Oscars, and Indiewire and Cartoon Brew wrote that it was very lucky to be among the five nominees. In addition, Krstić’s film was nominated for Best Independent Animation at the Annie Awards among films like This Magnificent Cake!, MFKZ, Mirai, and Tito and the Birds. Ruben Brandt, Collector will be released in American cinemas in the middle of February.

Ruben Brandt, Collector definitely became a decisive film in (contemporary) Hungarian animation, but so did it in the independent animation field, with its artistic and entertaining nature. Thanks to its significant professional recognition, we hope that it will encourage more and more experimental animated features to be supported by the Hungarian National Film Fund. 

Text by Zsófi Herczeg / Photo by Gábor Valuska

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SCREENING SCHEDULE FOR ENTROPIA by Flóra Anna Buda DAY

TIME

CINEMA

08.02.2019

21:30

CinemaxX 3

10.02.2019

21:30

CinemaxX 3

11.02.2019

16:00

CinemaxX 5 (Premiere)

13.02.2019

21:30

CinemaxX 3

14.02.2019

21:30

Odeon

15.02.2019

13:00

Zoo Palast 2

15.02.2019

17:00

Colosseum 1

16.02.2019

16:00

CinemaxX 5

17.02.2019

16:00

International

FROM BERLIN TO BERLIN Each year in February the Berlinale becomes the home of Hungarian cinema: two Hungarian animations are competing for the Golden Bear, while Márta Mészáros and Béla Tarr are in spotlight again.

SCREENING SCHEDULE FOR MR. MARE by Luca Tóth

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DAY

TIME

CINEMA

08.02.2019

16:00

CinemaxX 5

10.02.2019

21:30

CinemaxX 3

12.02.2019

21:30

CinemaxX 5 (Premiere)

13.02.2019

15:00

Zoo Palast 3

14.02.2019

14:00

HAU Hebbel am Ufer (HAU1)

14.02.2019

17:00

Colosseum 1

15.02.2019

16:00

CinemaxX 5

17.02.2019

17:00

Colosseum 1

Luca Tรณth and Anna Flรณra Buda, animation directors

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INTERVIEW

“THE PERSPECTIVE OF A CREATURE WHO DOESN’T HAVE THE BEHAVIOURAL TOOLS NEEDED TO BE LOVED” - INTERVIEW WITH LUCA TÓTH

Luca Tóth’s graduation short, The Age of Curious, premiered at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival in 2014 and won the Jury Distinction, and her first independent animation, the satirical Superbia, debuted at the Critics’ Week in Cannes in 2016. Now, her second film Mr. Mare has been selected into the Berlinale Shorts.

What an amazing run for such a young director! In her new film a young man’s chest x-ray detects the silhouette of a tiny person whose head is protruded as a tumour from the patient’s ribs. Who is this little creature and what kind of change will he bring after he is born from the man’s body?

This year is even more exciting for the Hungarian animation industry due to another entry into the Berlinale Shorts: the personal and futuristic graduation film Entropia by Flóra Anna Buda is also competing for the Golden Bear.

(Read our interview with Flóra on page 34.)

What did you do when you received the letter that Mr. Mare had been selected into the Berlinale Shorts?

I was in the cinema with my cousin and the movie was just about to start. I read the email then quickly called Gábor Osváth and Péter Benjámin Lukács [the producer and the sound designer - ed.] to tell them to check their inboxes.

Then I watched the movie in total happiness.

How does it feel to have your first film premiered in Cannes and your second animation debuted at the Berlinale?

It’s a real honour. If your first movie premieres at an A-list festival then you want a similar kind of attention for your second film, especially if you feel that you evolved in your art and you’d like this personal progress to not go

Text by Zsófi Herczeg / Photo by Gábor Valuska

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unnoticed. That’s why this fills me with great euphoria, because it looks like my second film could reach a wider audience as well.

How did you come up with the idea of the film?

Not trying to be rude, but I was watching a terribly boring film about trains with Gábor Osváth. It was just so monotonous that my brain tuned out and I started to think of a duo of an everyday person and a small figure growing in his chest. I fantasised about this throughout the movie we were watching, and by the time the train marathon ended, it became clear to me that this story is a kind of symbol of infatuation. A sense of belonging that neither rational reason nor logic can break because you are always a little confident that the other person belongs to you. Basically that was the starting point that I unwrapped in the film.

If you show this through the relationship between two men, could we assume that this film connects with the LGBTQ theme as well, like Superbia did?

It addresses the topic, but my aim wasn’t to have a political discourse with it. Basically I think there is no need for a more specific reason to show gay love than a hetero relationship. Unlike some of my other works, I didn’t make this film with a social statement in mind.

There were simply personal reasons for why I used male characters, one of which was that I wanted to place a distance between myself and the characters by making them different from me. If there isn’t any distance than they can often get too close, so much so that you can’t see their story clearly because you have become too biased. With this film my goal is not to make an unemotional film, but to avoid having any blind spots when it comes to the characters. I feel that I could keep a healthy distance from them, which also helped me to develop empathy for their conflicts. If the protagonist is an ageing, chubby old man who is in love with a younger guy, it’s easier for me to define this feeling and relationship in a film. The other reason was that there were little men and big women in Superbia, and I didn’t want to recreate a story like that simply because I don’t want to repeat myself.

What does Mr. Mare symbolise?

A person in love. I made up this voyeuristic, tiny character of Mr. Mare because I wanted to tell a one-sided love story. I wanted to show this from the perspective of a creature who doesn’t have the behavioural tools needed to be loved, he only knows how to love another person. So Mr. Mare is a creature who sees himself as tiny.

There is a duality in the character of Mr. Mare: although you portrayed him as an old man, he is a newborn who explores his environment.

Yes, you can witness how Mr. Mare’s character changes from the very beginning. He defines himself in this movie, and at the end he becomes a character in his own right. I like the absurdity associated with his character looking like the old gentlemen playing chess at Dagály, yet he is discovering the world around him with a childlike naivety.

There is a party scene in the movie with a sharp change of style. What was your aim with that?

This claustrophobic, meticulous, musty space where the two protagonists live is far away from the places outside. And Mr. Mare never sees what’s outside the place where they live. He defines himself in this place only and he understands his own character and everything that he learns in the film through this space. So everything else outside the apartment is characterised by a more subdued aesthetic, whether it is a party scene or just one of Mr. Mare’s fantasies.

Just like in Superbia, in Mr. Mare we see a man giving birth. How did you originally come up men giving birth?

I don’t know, it just turned out like that. Subconsciously.

(Laughs) In the couple’s everyday life a female figure shows up, one who is more dominant, just like in Superbia.

I like to visualise my characters as full people, even if they are just supporting characters or are hardly seen by the viewer. I think it happens many times in movies that the supporting actors aren’t given a character at all or it isn’t thought through enough. On the one hand my aim was for the viewer to somehow identify with this female character. On the other hand I wanted the girl’s character to be significantly different to Mr. Mare’s, which contrasts even more noticeably how Mr. Mare doesn’t suit the man.

What is the significance of the boy not seeing Mr. Mare but of the girl interacting with him?

I thought it would be nice that while Mr. Mare’s desire is to meet this young man and put him on a pedestal, he will never have a real relationship with him; Mr. Mare will always be part of his life as a voyeur only. However, Mr. Mare meets every other important character and is able to have some kind of connection with them.

He wants to be in the girl’s position, and there is a moment when they face each other and she humiliates him without his realising it. This provided a good basis for why Mr. Mare changes his previous habits, why he leaves the apartment, and why he decides to quit the existing dynamic with the young man.

Men and women in your movies are very characteristic. Why do you like to draw figures that are not “heteronormative”?

I have the same reasons for the appearance of my characters as I said earlier, whereby I don’t think that there should be a particular reason to introduce heterosexual or homosexual love. Just because someone is considered more sexy based on our social encounters, they have no more right to be in a film than anyone else. I always find it absurd that most films tell stories about beautiful people. But it’s actually not easy for me to think in heteronormative figures because I feel that these flaws help me to better illustrate the characteristics and background of my protagonists.

So what’s next?

The festival circle of Mr. Mare has just started. It’s always very exciting to finally see a movie that you have worked so hard on. And making a movie always takes so much energy out of me that I can’t even think about making another one yet. So I don’t have a new project in mind, but I will teach at MOME, which I’m really excited about. 

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INTERVIEW

“I DON’T THINK A PERSON WORKS ON JUST ONE SINGLE LEVEL” - INTERVIEW WITH FLÓRA ANNA BUDA This is the second time that a graduation film in animation from Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design in Budapest is selected into the short competition programme of Berlinale: in 2014, the satirical sketch Symphony no. 42 by Réka Bucsi was premiered, and this year the futuristic-surrealistic Entropia by Flóra Anna Buda is competing for the Golden Bear. In addition, Katalin Lovrity’s MOME graduation animated short, Volcano Island, was screened in the Generation Kplus programme in 2017. There is another Hungarian film in the competition programme this year: the animation short Mr. Mare, by Luca Tóth, is also a sensitive and promising piece to be premiered at the 69th edition of the festival. (Read our interview with Luca on page 32.)

Flóra Anna Buda’s short presents three parallel universes where three girls live in different circumstances. A fly flies over these separate universes and creates a bug in the system, whereby the girls are able to move towards each other, meet and melt in a peaceful idyll while the whole universe collapses around them.

How did the idea of the film come about?

The scene that takes place in the supermarket is almost exactly something that I saw in a dream. I think we were at a festival in Ljubljana where I saw the movie Is the Man Who is Tall Happy?

by Michel Gondry, which really inspired me. In it was a scene presenting the hypothetical scenario of what would happen if a time machine went wrong and you would meet yourself. This thought stayed with me because parallel realities and the fact that people are constantly looking for themselves are concepts that really interest me. Then I started to delve further, asking myself who I am and how I could define myself; but I was unable to put that into a linear story, because I see it as being more complex than that. That’s how writing down the experiences I live in the most honest way came about, because I don’t think a person works on just one single level.

Text by Zsófi Herczeg / Photo by Gábor Valuska

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How did you separate the three threads, the three female characters?

I received a lot of help from the scriptwriter Zsófia Ruttkay and the head of the Masters programme at MOME Animation, Tibor Bánóczki. I worked on the script with Zsófi, and Tibor gave me really good advice about the visual development. First I thought about three different styles for the three characters, but the film is really just about one person, so I decided to unify the styles to help the viewer understand - at least at the end - that these three stories are in fact three aspects of the same woman.

What do the three different women symbolise?

One of them represents the animalistic side of human nature, another is a consumer fulfilled with her own frustrations, and the third lives in a futuristic room where she has to keep running to keep the system functional.

Now that the movie is finished, do you feel that you have managed to process this identity search?

It helped me a lot, and that was in fact my aim, because when I started to write the film, seeing myself and the people around me in a better light was exactly what I needed. It sounds lame, but it eventually helped me to become integrated into society and I realised that everyone struggles with similar issues.

At your graduation you mentioned that David Lynch inspired you (you also wrote your thesis about his work). How so?

When I started to write my thesis I had a different topic in mind. Later, when I was working on the animatic I listened to a lot of interviews with Lynch. I have loved his work for a long time now and I’m sure that what I have learned from him has been incorporated into my visual thinking. In an interview he explained that when someone is making a movie, there is them and there is also a wall, behind which is another person who knows how to make the film. Lynch believes filmmaking is when you break this wall and find yourself, i.e. the one who knows how to shoot a film. I liked that very much. Basically, I’m very interested in processing dreams, so I feel close to Lynch’s thinking in this respect.

The title Entropia is very catchy. How did you come up with it?

The original title was Vanities, but as the story unfolded it became less and less true to the movie. I was talking about the film with Nándor Bera (Candide, Trees) when he said that it is a very entropy piece. It grabbed me immediately. I delved further and further into this subject and the more I read about it, the more firmly I believed that “entropia” would be the perfect title. I was afraid that it would be too scientific, as I was told that many wouldn’t understand its meaning. But I think it suits this kind of cyclical, circular, passing and rebirth process.

The film has a very strong symbolic system, such as the flies, the larvae, the deer and the consumer society.

What do they represent?

I think the deer is perhaps the most obvious of them all, as it represents a male-female relationship, a kind of dating method. For example, for the scene in the woods, I wanted to introduce the woman as a hunting creature,

hunting the young deer. With the fly, I had larvae starting to hatch in a dead animal in my mind. I once had a dream of sitting in a bathtub with a huge larva pouring liquid soap into it. The whole dream had a kind of Miyazaki feel to it. I wanted this giant caterpillar to have some role in my movie. It seemed clear to me that if I wanted to present a cycle, then something must be done with larvae for them to work in all three parts, and the whole must have some logic. That’s why the fly finally became the “storyteller” who is able to travel between the three worlds.

Who or what was inspired you besides Lynch? For example the surreal images that are reminiscent of the paintings by Magritte.

When I was a child, my parents took me to a lot of exhibitions, so many visual effects influenced me as a kid, especially Cézanne’s colour-mixing method. I am drawn to the make-believe, to mesmerising sketches, for example Escher’s portrayal of space. I’m mostly inspired by live-action films in the field of composition and editing. But we consume so much visual content on a daily basis that we are often unable to follow it all, and this is unwillingly or unintentionally integrated into our own thinking processes.

The rococo synthesiser music and noises of the film are futuristic, ominous and playful. How did you develop the sound world?

I was very lucky in that respect. For a long time I wanted Bach’s concerto in F minor to be the soundtrack to the film because I thought it would work really well with the natural pictures and the sci-fi element, but in hindsight I’m glad that I changed my mind. The final version was composed by Gergő Matos. I heard his music at a party, and as I was listening to one of his experimental electronic pieces it hit me that we should work together.

I asked him if he would be interested in a collaboration and he was really excited about the idea, as it turned out he had already thought about trying his hand at film composition. I also trusted my instincts a bit because Gergő had never previously worked as a sound engineer for animated films.

What instructions did you give him?

At the commercial scene, I sent him a style description of what kind of genres to mix, including some specific examples. I collected several, but I also tried to give Gergő a lot of creative freedom because he had very good ideas which he bravely put into the movie.

What are you currently working on? Do you have a new project in mind?

I’m currently attending an international workshop called Animation Sans Frontières, and I started to write a new short in the summer. I worked on Entropia for two years, and after a year and a half I started to come up with new ideas, which I couldn’t put into this movie. So I started to write a new story. So far it’s just a treatment, but I have a bit of visual design as well.

Will this movie be more experimental?

This will be an experiment for me insofar as it will include dialogue. I would definitely like to add lines to the characters but I would also like to leave the narrative complex. 

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SÁTÁNTANGÓ - THE FILM

SEVEN HOURS WITHOUT A WASTED MOMENT Béla Tarr’s marvelous masterpiece, Sátántangó celebrates its 25th anniversary this year: back in 1994, more than 7-hour-long , black-andwhite epos had its international premier at the Berlinale. 25 years later, the restored, renewed version is being screened again at the Forum.

Sátántangó screening at the Berlinale: SATURDAY, 16.02. 14.00, DELPHI FILMPALAST

Text by Dávid Dercsényi

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First of all, it’s impossible to define the length of the film. Every database claims a different figure, and everybody takes a stab at guessing. But in the end, it is not about the minutes. If you watch the whole thing you can say: you made it. Just as climbers do: I climbed the mountain because it’s there. And meanwhile I became part of it.

SÁTÁNTANGÓ IS A FILM THAT IS ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE TO MAKE IN THIS ERA. As a fan put it in words: “After ten minutes of looking at a herd of cows, Hollywood executives would leave; it would never receive funding from Britain's Film Council, and it has no chance of screening in a multiplex or being shown on television. It is the polar opposite of the blockbuster and the Miramax-backed foreign-language Oscar-winner. It is a slap in the face of consumerism and corporate taste.”

Not only would making Sátántangó be close to impossible (it took 120 shooting days, 100 000 metres of film, of shooting only in dusk or dawn, of painstaking efforts on behalf of the actors, of huge amounts of consumed booze) but so would watching it in its entirety. As Tarr himself said, the duration is as long as a busy working day. You basically have to dedicate a day of your life instead of the the usual cinematique 1.5-2 hours. This demands tenacity and participation. It transforms you, it works on you, it tortures you - just as the life of the settlers in the film. As Jonathan Romney said in The Guardian: “Tarr is one of very few European directors determined to work outside mainstream forms, and who still believe in cinema’s potential to transform the viewer.” You see things happening – according to Tarr the film must be

watched on the big screen, not on TV – in real time; which equals the most radical compression according to film critic Erzsébet Bori concerning Sátántangó.

During which time doesn’t go, it just passes. Watching animals and humans passing for 7.5 hours isn’t watching anymore either; it’s participating.

This participation reshaped you in 1994 and it reshaped you in 2018. Considering this movie to be unwatchable in terms of our daily life, how could it then get 100% positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes? How can the number of fans be on a constant increase?

How is it possible that the only Hungarian film on the list of the 50 Greatest Films of All Time, announced just once every decade, is Sátántangó (ranked 34th in 2012).

On the one hand, these achievements intrigued a journalist of Vice when he watched the film in 2015: coming out of the cinema at the other end will feel like you have achieved something. Which, in turn, can only make you feel, at the very least, a tad superior to folks who haven’t. There’s value in that. On the other hand, there’s the perfection of interpretation of the novel by László Krasznahorkai: when you go to a museum and see an expertly crafted portrait, do you glance for a few seconds and move on to something else? No. You stare, you take it in and you immerse yourself, because it’s worth the extra attention. That’s every shot in Sátántangó. Krasznahorkai’s whirling sentences with their heavy doses of commas and semicolons are all there on screen.

Struggle and totality. What else? When Péter Esterházy watched Sátántangó, he pointed out the question of aesthetics: “I still believe that it is too much.

Not in the sense that it fails to grab on to something, no; it grabs, it holds, but maybe too much. (…) Tarr was making a film so long that he almost succeeded to terminate the film.” Terminate it? The Sátántangó

brought hope back to Susan Sontag, whereby the art of film wasn’t ready to die yet. Her famous essay made the basic remarks about the reception of Sátántangó: “this seven-hour-long movie hardly has a wasted moment” and it was “devastating, enthralling for every minute of its seven hours”. It is a film she claims she would gladly see every year for the rest of her life.

The conclusion? Sátántangó is an unthinkably rich piece of art, presenting an almost unthinkably low point of being. To quote the novel: “My mother is the sea, my father is the ground. Neither sea, nor ground”.

Only mud exists, and humans dancing their satanic tango in it. Ugly truth? “Every scene is beautiful”, said Tarr once.

A REGION WITHOUT GOD, FULL OF FAKE PROPHETS, IRREAL EXPECTATIONS. Jonathan Rosenbaum called Tarr a spiritualised Tarkovsky and Tarr himself spoke about it in an interview: “You know, I don’t believe in God. That’s my problem. If I think about God, okay, he has a responsibility for the whole thing, but I don’t know.

If you listen to any mass, it sounds like two dogs when they start to fight”.

Tarr has claimed several times that it’s a comedy, but it’s full of all the misery that exists in eastern Europe.

It is very much tied to when it was made, and it is very much timeless. As one foreign critic understood it: “Sátántangó’s glacial pace, its slow, detailed examination of a small community of Hungarian peasants, makes it clear that no political system can reach people whose character has been formed by centuries of oppression. This is our life”, agrees the Hungarian watcher. 

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SÁTÁNTANGÓ - THE PRINT

A FLAT-OUT MASTERPIECE: RESTORED SÁTÁNTANGÓ DEBUTS AT THE BERLINALE 25 years after its original release, Béla Tarr’s masterpiece has received 4K digital restoration, and the result will be shown for the first time at the Berlin Film Festival this year. The renewed version will reveal details few have ever seen before, recreating the Hungarian luminary’s original vision far more successfully than the formerly available digital prints. Sátántangó, also called the Mount Everest of modern cinema due to its 7.5-hour running time, was restored in cooperation with the Hungarian Filmlab and Arbelos Films (US) under the guidance of Béla Tarr himself.

“We’ve kept a short list of ‘dream films’ to restore and re-release over the years and Sátántangó has always been at the top – it’s simply a flat-out masterpiece”, says David Marriott of Arbelos Films, the boutique film distributor and digital restoration company based in Los Angeles that financed and oversaw the restoration process.

Adapted in 1994 from the first novel by the Man Booker Prize-winner László Krasznahorkai, Tarr’s 450-minute-long movie quickly became a rarely seen yet legendary work of art. Restoring it is undoubtedly a heroic adventure in and of itself. The numbers speak for themselves: the original film negative is more than 12 kilometres long and weighs approximately 104 kilograms. These dimensions mean that digitising the original print at the Hungarian Filmlab, a state-of-theart archive and home for the original prints of most Hungarian movies, was a sensible option.

“Arbelos Films entrusted us with digitising the original negative print in 4K. Béla Tarr chose not to ship the print to the United States, to protect it from unnecessary damages, so we executed the colour grading here in Hungary as well”, says the director of the Hungarian Filmlab, László Aradi. The lab specialises in postproduction and restoration work and restores more than 30 movies a year. It’s equipped with an extensive

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analogue lab and a trained staff with decades of experience working with 35-mm celluloid film.

Under the guidance of seasoned experts like László Aradi and the production manager Tamás Bódizs, the restoration process looks deceivingly smooth. First, carefully selected cleaning staff examines the condition of the original negatives and removes any dirt or superficial damage, like perforation errors, to get the celluloid in the best shape possible. If necessary, they also work with an advanced Kodak machine that cleans up most of the dust that is automatically generated when a film negative is taken out of its case.

After that, things get digital, and a Filmlight scanner scans the purified negatives, frame by frame. The scanner can produce an 8K resolution if needed, and it is designed to be able to scan films that might be up to 100 years old, sparing the damaged celluloid with adhesive rollers instead of toothed ones. Fortunately, the original negative of Sátántangó was for the most part in relatively good condition; there was only one severely torn frame, so the biggest challenge was simply managing the massive amount of data that comes with the 7.5-hour runtime. It took 3-4 weeks to digitise the movie frame by frame, and the 4K scan needed more than 30 terabytes of space.

The restoration process took place in Los Angeles, a fairly problem-free workflow despite the enormous length of Sátántangó. “One problem that did crop up was a stock flaw issue that they had with several rolls of the original negative. It ends up looking similar to x-ray damage, with intermittent flashes in your images. Per Béla’s request we’ve cleaned up this problem as best we could”, says Craig Rogers, the CEO of Arbelos Films, whose main goal was to achieve a look as close to the original negative as possible, rather than adjusting the restored version to the look of over-clean digital movies.

“Our 4K DCP should look like the first show print that was struck from the original negative. The added benefit of digital tools means we were able to fix the scratches and film stock flaws. The occasional flickery shot is no longer flickery. The film will no longer ‘bump’ at cuts and reel breaks. Otherwise it will still very much look like a film print. We never de-grain images to please a more contemporary audience. Our dedication is to the film and to the filmmaker”, adds Rogers.

That principle was reflected in practice when Rogers flew to Budapest to oversee the colour grading of Sátántangó, together with Béla Tarr and the Hungarian Filmlab colourist Robert Libel. Sátántangó is famous for being composed of extremely long shots to convey the stillness of time in a world mired in decay. If you expected those extraordinary long takes to cause a problem during the restoration, you wouldn’t be too mistaken – but not completely right either. “Long takes pose challenges mainly on set, not so much in post-production”, says Robert Libel. “There were several instances when a character moves from one place to another in a single shot, for example when the doctor goes into the mill and up to the attic, where the intensity of sunlight and shade differs extensively.

We had to optimise the ratio of greys and lights in those 8-10-minute-long shots, but that was the only challenge caused by the long takes.”

The restoration of Sátántangó is a much-awaited item of news for those who previously faced serious difficulties with obtaining a copy. 35-mm prints were extremely rare, many of the DVD editions were out of print, and the film has never been released on Blu-ray. Until now, that is. The restored version will get a European premiere at the Berlin Film Festival, and a United States premiere will happen in the autumn of 2019. In North America Sátántangó will play at domestic festivals and embark on a multi-city theatrical tour across the United States and Canada, to ultimately be released on special edition Blu-ray and streaming in 2020.

It will be a truly marvellous experience to watch this breathtakingly ambitious movie in a version closest to the original, a version that’s miles better than the DVD print currently available. “Starting with a 4K scan versus a standard definition telecine alone will reveal details few have ever seen before, outside of the small number of people who has had the chance to see Sátántangó in a 35-mm film screening”, says Rogers.

“The added resolution will reveal fine details lost in previous releases. The dynamic range captured by scanning will also reveal highlight and shadow details significantly above any previous DVD release.”

László Aradi

Tamás Bódizs

Róbert Nagy

“I’ve been an admirer of Béla’s work for a long time, and nothing compares to the viewing experience of Sátántangó”, says Ei Toshinari of Arbelos Films.

“It’s a transcendent film, with an atmosphere and hypnotic pace that’s truly sublime. We’re extremely proud to be able to present this new 4K restoration of Sátántangó.”

Text by Tamás Soós / Photo by Gábor Valuska

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‘THE MÁRTA MÉSZÁROS MARVEL’ ADOPTION AT THE BERLINALE CLASSICS 2019 sees yet another Hungarian participant at the 69th Berlin International Film Festival’s Berlinale Classics. This year the programme includes Márta Mészáros’ Adoption (Örökbefogadás), which featured at the 25th festival in West Berlin in 1975 and brought massive success to Márta Mészáros and to Hungarian filmmaking in general. Adoption was the first Hungarian film to compete in Berlin, immediately winning the Golden Bear for Best Film, while at the same time making Márta Mészáros the first female director to ever be awarded the prize.

This film opened a window to filmmaking in Europe and the world: compared to other Hungarian films it threw new light on Hungarian reality from the perspective of women’s souls and women’s relations. For the first time it expressed that moment of self-awareness when the need for transformation presents itself in a woman, when she desires to alter her fate.

The director, written about globally as the ‘Márta Mészáros marvel’, has a profound understanding of reality. Even as a young child she had struggled with being an orphan, with hunger and with the vicissitudes of history. The Kossuth and Prima Prize laureate director, winner of awards at Berlinale, at Chicago and at numerous other international festivals, was born in Budapest in 1931. Her father, the avantgarde sculptor László Mészáros, in fleeing fascism moved the family to Kirgizia, where at the outbreak of World War II fell victim to Stalin’s purges. Her mother also died. She was placed in a Soviet orphanage and only returned to Hungary after the war. Between 1954–1956 she studied at the Moscow film academy and until 1968 made documentaries in Romania and Hungary.

These autobiographical motifs inspired the internationally acclaimed Diary series.

Together with her contemporaries Agnès Varda, Larissa Shepitko and Věra Chytilová, she ranks as one of the most significant female filmmakers in the world. Her first full-length film was The Girl (1968). In Don’t Cry, Pretty Girls, Riddance, Adoption, Nine Months and The Two of Them Márta Mészáros depicts – in a non-judgemental way and with puritanical unaffectedness – that process whereby something great and simple happens in the life of her self-aware, seeking-rebellious female protagonists, forcing them to make decisions.

These films were instant international hits. Nine Months took an OCIC prize at Berlinale and a FIPRESCI prize at Cannes (1977). The Heiresses, made in a co-production, reveals a historical background behind remarkable love triangle relationships. Then came the Diary tetralogy, of which the first, Diary for My Children, won the Grand Prix Speciale du Jury at Cannes (1984).

ADOPTION screening at the Berlinale: Tuesday, 12.02. 19.00, CinemaXX 8, Wednesday, 13.02. 12.30, CinemaXX 9

Text by Eszter Fazekas

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With 30 feature films and numerous documentaries to her name, the director also made a movie, Unburied Man (2004), about Imre Nagy, the leading figure of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. Her latest critically acclaimed film, Aurora Borealis (2017), looks back at the Soviet occupation of Vienna through an unusual mother-daughter fate.

In her fifth film Adoption, Márta Mészáros, in a mature and lean style, speaks about the opportunities and relationships of women; about loneliness, the lies involved in relations between men and women, about vulnerability and about life within institutions.

She wrote the screenplay with Miklós Jancsó’s regular writer, Gyula Hernádi, and his first assistant, Ferenc Grunwalsky. Secretive internal tension and sadness, both subjects of the film, are fundamentally inherent in both of Mészáros’ actresses, Kati Berek, who plays the lead role, and the amateur Gyöngyvér Vígh. However, the freedom that cannot be broken still radiates from both artists.

Adoption – Kati Berek & Gyöngyvér Vígh © Magda B. Müller

A widowed working woman in her early forties would like to escape the emptiness that surrounds her by having a child with her married lover. Spiritually, the man is not involved in this relationship, he is confused, but Kata faces up to her own emotional vulnerability. One day, a girl who has run away from a home seeks shelter with her. Anna’s desperate want of a mother and love shocks Kata into the realisation that she has to change her life. She helps the girl leave the institute and marry the boy she loves.

Kata then adopts an infant from the institute.

The films by Mészáros differ from those of the contemporaneous ‘Budapest School’ in that she doesn’t concentrate on the social background, showing only as much of the microclimate as is psychologically necessary.

In this style she termed ‘quasi-realistic’, through the finely wrought images of Lajos Koltai, the faces communicate all the stress that neither man nor woman is capable of voicing. The ambiguity, hardness, passion and curious similarities in the relationship between the two women are drawn with expressive facial lines and in the eyes.

Kati Berek’s neutral gaze from the run-down worker’s hostel window is a universal portrait of hopelessness.

The landscape is depopulated, of multiple tones of grey. The unexpected arrival of the absconding girls materialises out of the grey mist. Anna’s sincerity gives Kata the opportunity to taste the painful excitement and beauty of taking care of somebody else. The two women free each other from their respective hopeless situations.

However, the end of the film does not emphasise the happiness but instead the uncertainty. Young Anna weeps at her own wedding while the ageing unmarried mother Kata leaves with her infant for the distant bus stop in a perplexed state.

According to Jean Baroncelli, the legendary critic of Le Monde: “The Márta Mészáros marvel is the marvel of acute vision and sensitivity, the marvel of a woman who speaks of her fellows in a way that not a single man is able to (perhaps with the exception of Bergman)”.

(Le Monde, 14 May 1980) 41 films have been restored in the programme of the Hungarian National Film Fund since January 2017.

The restoration of nine films from Márta Mészáros’ oeuvre will be completed in 2019. More on filmarchiv.hu. 

Just Like at Home - Márta Mészáros © István Jávor

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INTERVIEW

A WOMAN WHO WANTS TO LIVE AND TO GIVE LIFE In 1975, Márta Mészáros, the director of ‘Adoption’ (Örökbefogadás), was the first woman to ever win the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival (and in fact it was a decade before the first woman won the Golden Lion and almost two decades before the first woman won the Palme d’Or). 44 years later the restored version of ‘Adoption’ will be screened again at the festival. We talked with the director about her memories, about arriving to the West from the East, and about the feminist movements of the 70s.

Were you surprised to hear ‘Adoption’ would be screening again in Berlin?

Why should I have been surprised? Receiving the Golden Bear was a surprise, but after that the film lived its own – and very successful – life: since winning the grand prize at the Berlinale the film has been shown all around the world. I don’t want to complain but I must say that in other countries these things were not the same as in Hungary: if a film is successful, has won a lot of prizes, has been sold to a lot of countries, then people talk about it a lot. But in Hungary no one talked about ‘Adoption’ and it’s rarely screened today. I am happy when I get messages from time to time from all over the world that it is being screened somewhere, and at the same time I am a bit sad that in Hungary it seems as if it doesn’t exist at all.

Text by Bálint Kovács / Photo by Gábor Valuska

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Now, the Hungarian Film Fund’s Film Archive and Film Lab restored and digitized the film. Why do you think your film was ignored back then, when it was awarded the Golden Bear? Was it the topic?

I don’t know the reason but I don’t think it’s the topic: it’s a deeply human story about a lonely woman who longs to have a child, but as her lover doesn’t, she adopts one.

Even nowadays one can hear millions and millions of these kinds of stories from all around the world. And maybe the film tells this story in a way that can affect people. But I have to say that when I returned to Hungary after the Berlinale people here weren’t too impressed about the prize. Nevertheless, I am very happy that there is a festival like Berlinale; many directors’ careers started there, and if you win a prize you feel that the world of cinema has welcomed you. I return here with a newly restored digital print.

I always had a feeling in Berlin that it’s not just a festival with screenings and some glasses of wine afterwards, but that it has an atmosphere of importance: this festival pays attention to the state and current trends of cinema.

Berlinale is a bit like the Academy Awards, or maybe even better, because the Oscars is too much about money.

Films that win prizes in Berlin are always talking about the world we live in. It’s like the book publishing industry: if you buy books for a long train trip you will just leave some behind on your seat when you get off, but there will be others that you want to embrace, keep and put on your shelf. Cinema is the same: there are films, and then there are Films with a capital F. I don’t want to praise myself, but I am at the end of my life and I have always been honest: yes, ‘Adoption’ is like a book you can put on a shelf and read again whenever you want to. But nowadays Hungarian critics are often unable to evaluate films like that, they are unable to differentiate between films and Films.

this film winning the grand prize but at least the feminist movements like it”.

This is a film about a lonely woman who works at a factory and wants a child. It has nothing to do with feminist movements; back then I didn’t even know about them. In eastern Europe the movement was maybe only something to mock, but now we already know that it has led to the fact that the United Kingdom has a female prime minister, and from South Africa to the European Union there are women everywhere working in the financial sector and in politics. This all started back then.

Will you go to Berlin again for the screening of ‘Adoption’?

Yes, with my grandchildren, but I no longer have any expectations. They called me to tell me everyone will be celebrating me. ‘Adoption’ was important for them too as I was the first female director in the world to win such an important prize. That was a milestone for the festival too, and they were happy to award someone from the Eastern block – back then the relation between the two blocks was rough, the Iron Curtain and the Wall still existed –, especially for a film which was not about politics at all but about a woman who wants to live and to give life. Even the Russians bought the rights of the film and in Moscow people still remember it. The Hungarian Film Fund’s Film Archive just restored the film so I watched it again, and I felt that it hadn’t aged at all, that it could have been made at any point in time. For me, this is the greatest happiness. 

What kind of feedback did you receive back then in Berlin?

Again, I can only talk about compliments: everyone was spellbound. Winning the prize was a really big thing: I was the first woman to ever get an important prize at a film festival like that. People from the United States, from Italy, even from Russia surrounded me and congratulated me.

And everyone still remembers the film. My grandchildren studied in Berlin, and when people would hear about their grandmother they always named my films, not only ‘Adoption’ but also ‘Diary for My Lovers’ (which won the Silver Bear in Berlin).

Back then, it was really strange even to get to Berlin. There were two Berlins – East and West –, and if you arrived to East Berlin first you had to go through a hole tousling your suitcase behind you to get to West Berlin. This process wasn’t too fancy, but on the other side of the wall you found yourself in another world. I arrived in a Volga and the driver just threw out my suitcase on the concrete for me to pick up. In contrast, once I had crossed the border two gentle persons with flowers and a Mercedes awaited me. That was the difference.

In the 70s and 80s feminist movements considered you as one of the most important directors.

The movement was always important; it still is, and it’s getting bigger and bigger. But back then feminism was more like a word to insult with; the articles’ tone in Hungarian newspapers was something like “Excuse us for

MÁRTA MÉSZÁROS IN CHB On the 13th of February, a day after the Berlinale premiere of her Golden Bear-winning ‘Adoption’, the Collegium Hungaricum Berlin will honour Márta Mészáros with an all-day event. Three legendary Mészáros films will be shown: the Cannes award-winning ‘Diary for my Children’, the “scandalous” ‘Nine Months’ and ‘The Two of Them’, the only movie to feature Vladimir Vysotsky and his French love Marina Vlady together. The screenings will be followed by a Q&A with Márta Mészáros from 7pm.

Location: CHB, Dorotheenstraße 12, 10117 Berlin For further information, please visit www.hungaricum.de

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COMING SOON Upcoming films: various genres and authors, much-awaited first features and comebacks. This is where you can learn all about them.

FESTIVALS: marta.benyei@filmalap.hu, kati.vajda@filmalap.hu

INTERNATIONAL SALES: klaudia.androsovits@filmalap.hu

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COMRADE DRACULICH / DRAKULICS ELVTÁRS black comedy DIRECTED BY MÁRK BODZSÁR PRODUCED BY CSABA PÉK, ATTILA TŐZSÉR / DRAKULICS PROD.

CREAM / HAB romantic comedy FIRST FEATURE DIRECTED BY NÓRA LAKOS PRODUCED BY KATALIN HARRER, PÉTER REICH / GYEREKJÁTÉK PROD. 46

A vampire tale set during the Cold War. At the beginning of the 70s, the People’s Republic of Hungary organises a blooddrive for Vietnam, which is at war with the United States. As the guest of honour, a vampire sets foot on the communist country’s soil. A young couple who works for the Hungarian secret police is assigned to monitor the stranger and to find out the secret behind his eternal youth. During the vampire hunt, a love triangle sparks and everyone has to choose between love, blood and communism.

The love of 34-year-old Dora’s life has broken up with her, or even worse: he has married another woman. Her only joy, the pastry shop she owns, also appears to be lost. She makes up her mind to get both her ex-boyfriend and her pastry shop back, even if it means she has to lie. Along the way she meets other families as well as her ex-boyfriend’s new wife. These meetings make her realise the love she is clinging to has no real basis. Dora stops living in a state of romantic self-pity, puts an end to the lying and opens up to the possibility of a new, real relationship.

EDEN (HU/RO/BE) drama DIRECTED BY ÁGNES KOCSIS PRODUCED BY JÓZSEF BERGER, JUDIT SCHMIDT / MYTHBERG FILMS with LIBRA FILM & WFE

FINAL REPORT / ZÁRÓJELENTÉS social drama DIRECTED BY ISTVÁN SZABÓ PRODUCED BY PÁL SÁNDOR, ATTILA TŐZSÉR / FILMSTREET LTD.

Éva is allergic to all kinds of chemical substances, radio waves and electronic fields. She needs to live in total isolation; her only contact is with her brother and the doctors that keep experimenting on her. One day a psychiatrist comes to investigate if her illness is real or just imagined. Is love able to save her?

A renowned professor of cardiology, who in his youth wanted to be an opera singer, returns to his village after retirement to become the local GP. In the village he faces conflicts he has not confronted, the attitude of servitude, how rumours and fake news can manipulate general opinion, and the intricate network of interdependent relationships. The only person with whom he can share his troubles is his childhood classmate, now the village priest. He clashes with the mayor of the village over a forest spring falsely claimed to have healing properties. He is so savagely attacked over the issue that he decides to leave the village. He needs to seek another path to survive, and finally fulfils his youthful ambition, finding himself through music and song.

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FLAT FOR FUN / KÖLCSÖNLAKÁS romantic comedy FIRST FEATURE DIRECTED BY KATA DOBÓ PRODUCED BY MÓNIKA SÁROSI / KÖLCSÖNLAKÁS PROD.

IMPROMPTU drama – FIRST FEATURE DIRECTED BY ZOLTÁN NAGY PRODUCED BY GÁBOR OSVÁTH, DREISSIGER LÁSZLÓ / FILMFABRIQ HNFF INCUBATOR PROGRAM SELECTION 48

In this comedy of sexy errors no one wants what they should want, no one does what they should do: everybody lies, cheats, blunders and fakes something. Love is just the beginning. Desire comes next. And out of desire, a group of lovebirds are all going for the same cosy nest on the same night, packed with surprises, lies and newfound love.

Dávid is a mature age student studying music. He has a special relationship with the youth orchestra’s conductor, Mr. Kerekes, an engaging teacher in his 60s. A relatively new addition to the orchestra is 13-­year-­old Nóri, who is still an outsider as the ‘new girl’ and who has little self­-confidence. Dávid’s life turns slowly upside down when he finds out that Nóri is being molested by Mr. Kerekes.

LIQUID GOLD / FOLYÉKONY ARANY documentary DIRECTED BY TAMÁS ALMÁSI PRODUCED BY JULIANNA UGRIN / ÉCLIPSE FILM

MIMI comedy, romance DIRECTED BY DÉNES OROSZ PRODUCED BY ATTILA TŐZSÉR, DÉNES OROSZ / A2O PROD.

The Aszú of Tokaj, a sweet wine of Hungary, was once cherished

by King Louis XIV, Queen Victoria, Peter the Great, Goethe and Beethoven. But the world has since forgotten the noble Aszú; two world wars, the enforced collectivisation of the Communist regime and the deadly filoxera epidemic had all wreaked havoc on the vines. Three men: István Szepsy, the scion of a great Hungarian wine-making family, András Bacsó, the managing director of Oremus, and László Alkonyi, a once-successful stock broker who fell in love with wine-making and moved to Tokaj.

One shared obsession: to return the Great Wine to its place on the most important tables of the world. The men set the bar high: to make the world’s best, 100% naturally produced sweet wine.

Battling nature’s whims and competing with global powers, could they better the grandest international wine producers and restore the Aszú to its former glory?

Gergő is a film critic whose mother is obsessed with having a grandchild. She has serious heart disease and has only days left to live. To give his mum some joy during her final hours, Gergő asks his neighbour Saci, who is five months pregnant, to visit his mother in hospital with him and tell her that she is carrying his child. It all goes smoothly, but a new heart arrives, and his mum is operated on and makes a good recovery. Therefore, Gergő and Saci are forced to play the roles of the loving couple.

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FOMO (FEAR OF MISSING OUT) drama – FIRST FEATURE DIRECTED BY ATTILA HARTUNG PRODUCED BY PETRA IVÁNYI, ISTVÁN MAJOR / FILMTEAM HNFF INCUBATOR PROGRAM SELECTION

SEVEN LITTLE COINCIDENCES / HÉT KIS VÉLETLEN drama DIRECTED BY PÉTER GOTHÁR PRODUCED BY ÁGNES PATAKI, GÁBOR KOVÁCS / PARTNERSFILM

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Gergő and his teenage friends are into three things: partying, sex and how many online followers they have. One night, at a party, Lilla falls victim to the boys. A dare gets out of hand and the young boys’ world changes forever overnight. #party #sexy #shame #challenge #girls #summer #swag #bdfcknpst #bff #hungary #fun #rage #followme #FALKA_channel

We talk about coincidence if happiness and freedom suddenly appear when hopeless paths encounter. Like that of the heroes of our ironic tale. The marriage of Gertrud and Misi, fading into a union of many years, is disrupted by Alban, a former student of Gertrud’s. Their only son Zoli also falls in love with the rebellious girl coming from afar. The love of Gertrud and Alban even gives a chance for Misi, left alone, to restart. Furthermore, the girl’s thirst for freedom brings a new turn into their shared life.

SPIRAL (HU/RO) drama – FIRST FEATURE DIRECTED BY CECÍLIA FELMÉRI PRODUCED BY ANDRÁS MUHI, MÓNIKA MÉCS, ERNŐ MESTERHÁZY / INFORG-M&M FILM with HAI HUI ENT.

TALES FROM THE PRISON CELL / MESÉK A ZÁRKÁBÓL creative documentary – FIRST FEATURE DIRECTED BY ÁBEL VISKY PRODUCED BY ESZTER GYÁRFÁS, VIKTÓRIA PETRÁNYI / PROTON CINEMA HNFF INCUBATOR PROGRAM SELECTION

A strange, triangular story that takes place by a lake between a man and two women. It’s about letting go, repeating relationships, paying attention to each other and about how hard it is to change.

Tales from the Prison Cell is about the relationship between fathers in prison and their children at home. In addition to presenting three incarcerated fathers, we gain insight into the changed lives of their families and children. As we become familiar with their daily lives, we witness the distance and even the closeness that grows between the inmates and their families.

As a way of keeping in contact, the inmates write fairy tales for their kids which we then make into films with their participation.

The stories convey messages that the fathers have come to see as basic truths during the course of their own lives and believe are important to pass on. Within these stories, in the freedom created by fiction, father and child can be united once again.

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TALL TALES / APRÓ MESÉK thriller, drama DIRECTED BY ATTILA SZÁSZ PRODUCED BY TAMÁS LAJOS / FILM POSITIVE PROD.

TAMAS BARTA, THE LEGEND / SIESS HAZA, VÁR A MAMA documentary DIRECTED BY ESZTER HAJDÚ PRODUCED BY SÁNDOR MESTER / MIRADOURO LTD. 52

1945, Hungary. Shortly after the end of World War II, when chaos and insecurity reign supreme in the country, a con man tries to take advantage of such confused times. Forced to flee Budapest, he is given shelter in the woods by a mysterious woman and her son. Still trying to confront his demons, he soon finds himself in a passionate love affair with the woman whose husband is about to return home from the front.

Tamas Barta was a legendary rock guitarist of the 70s. He was born in Budapest in 1948 and emigrated to the United States in 1974, where he was killed in 1982 under mysterious circumstances. In Hungary he was the best rock guitarist of his generation, but his dream was to emigrate and live in the States, which was illegal in the time. The film is based on “audio-letters” that for several years Barta and his mother exchanged on audio-cassettes between Budapest and Los Angeles. There are also private archives from the 70s in Budapest and Los Angeles showing the two different worlds, as well as interviews with musicians, experts and Barta’s family members and friends.

Did Barta find what he was looking for in the Western world where he could speak and live freely? Did he manage to build a new life for himself without the control of the dictatorship and his intense mother? How and why did he die?

TOBIAS / EGY FIÚ documentary – FIRST FEATURE DIREDTED BY ALEXA BAKONY PRODUCED BY GÁBOR OSVÁTH, ILDIKÓ SZŰCS / FILMFABRIQ HNFF INCUBATOR PROGRAM SELECTION

VALAN thriller – FIRST FEATURE DIRECTED BY BÉLA BAGOTA PRODUCED BY LÁSZLÓ KÁNTOR / MATRIX FILM

In the middle of nowhere is a tiny village in Hungary where the Tuza family lives. After the shock of Tobias’s desire to change sex, it was obvious to all members of the family that they had to support him. However, his mother Eva silently suffocates from the idea of losing the girl she raised; meanwhile, Tobias has to become independent of her. His job is not only to become a man, but to become an adult. They have to fight with the bureaucracy of the state and with being judged by their community, but mostly with their biggest fears. Behind the hidden tension of the two is a spectrum of emotions about releasing and accepting.

Can the Tuzas love survive this transition?

Péter investigates a sex-trafficking ring as a big city cop in Brasov.

He has dedicated his life to finding women who have disappeared, and he sees his sister Juli in every girl he saves. Juli disappeared twenty-two years ago in their hometown, Valan, in the ensuing chaos of the Romanian Revolution of 1989.

Péter has to return to the Transylvanian mining town after receiving a phone call that the body of his sister might have been found among the pines on a snow-capped mountain. His personal investigation in Valan not only forces him to confront a crime rate that is stifling the town, but it also takes him back to the labyrinth of the past where he must face his own demons.

A suspenseful and heart-wrenching psychological thriller, a completely new voice in Hungarian filmmaking.

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CATALOGUE

NEW FILMS FROM HUNGARY Flip through the latest titles in every genre and learn about casts, crews and contacts.

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BAD POEMS (Rossz versek)

97 min, 2018

Director: Gábor Reisz Main cast: Gábor Reisz, Donát Seres, Mátyás Prukner, Barnabás Prukner, Katica Nagy, Zsolt Kovács, Katalin Takács, Lili Monori, with the participation of Niels Schneider Producers: Júlia Berkes, Estelle Robin You Production company: Proton Cinema & Les films du balibari Festivals: kati.vajda@filmalap.hu, marta.benyei@filmalap.hu Sales: klaudia.androsovits@filmalap.hu, orr.krisztina@filmalap.hu

33-year-old Tamás Merthner is heartbroken after his girlfriend Anna, who is on a scholarship in Paris, breaks up with him. While wallowing in self-pity, Tamás takes a trip down memory lane to figure out if love only exists when it’s practically gone. As he’s trying to pick up the pieces, he begins to realise what makes this current society so confused, which gives us a highly subjective view of present-day Hungary.

Gábor Reisz graduated from ELTE Faculty of Humanities – Film History and Film Theory (Budapest) in 2006 and from the University of Theatre and Film Arts (Budapest) as a film director in 2013. His debut feature, For Some Inexplicable Reason (2014), an unconventional coming-of-age story, premiered at the Karlovy Vary IFF and became a cult film in Hungary, as well as being a big success at the box office and on the international festival circuit. In 2015 he was invited to the Cannes Film Festival’s Residence programme where he developed Bad Poems.

Supported by the Hungarian National Film Fund

FESTIVALS AND AWARDS 2018 - Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival 2018 - Torino Film Festival - Jury’s Special Mention, Scuola Holden Award for Best Script, AVANTI Award

FEATURES

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BLOSSOM VALLEY (Virágvölgy)

83 min, 2018 First Feature Film

Director: László Csuja Main cast: László Réti, Bianka Berényi, Attila Csabai, Gábor Császár Producers: András Muhi, Gábor Ferenczy Production company: Focusfox Studio Festivals: kati.vajda@filmalap.hu, marta.benyei@filmalap.hu Sales: klaudia.androsovits@filmalap.hu, orr.krisztina@filmalap.hu

Blossom Valley is a socio-realist movie that plays with the genre of lovers-on-the-run. The actors are amateurs to whom these events didn’t happen but could have happened. Bianka, 20, finds herself drifting in the suburbs without any particular purpose. She has the sudden urge to steal a baby, which she does, but now she has to find a father and a home. When none of her ex-boyfriends are willing to lend a hand, the only one happy to help is Laci, 21, who is mentally disabled and living in a workers’ hostel. Bianka sees this whole situation as little less than thrilling role play, but Laci starts to love both her and the baby, and will do whatever it takes to ensure a happy family life.

FESTIVALS AND AWARDS 2018 - Karlovy Vary International Film Festival - East of the West Section, Special Jury Prize 2018 - Palic Film Festival - Best Film, Critics’ Jury Prize 2018 - Frankfurt-Am-Main Lucas 2018 - Copenhagen CPH:PIX 2018 - Kinenova International Film Festival 2018 - Cairo International Film Festival 2018 - Targu Mures Alternative 2018 - Bratislava International Film Festival 2018 - Santiago de Compostela Curtocircuito 2018 - Segovia Muces

GUERILLA

86 min, 2019 First Feature Film Director: György Mór Kárpáti Main cast: Gergely Váradi, Blanka Mészáros, Benett Vilmányi Producer: Viktória Petrányi Production company: Proton Cinema Festivals and sales: thania.dimitrakopoulou@matchfactory.de

In 1849, the liberation war against the Habsburg Empire is coming close to its end in Hungary.

Having hidden from military draft, Barnabás leaves his hometown and walks across the country to find and save his wounded brother who has been hiding with a guerilla group deep in the forest. Despite their exhaustion and lack of food or information they are still fighting for their cause. Barnabás finds his brother alienated and distrustful. The tension between the boys further increases when they turn out to be attracted to the same nurse in the camp. Hoping he can earn his brother’s trust and take him home, Barnabás decides to stay and lie about his past. In the meantime, he has to face the cruelty of war.

György Mór Kárpáti (*1984) is a Budapest-based film director and writer. He studied at the Directors’ Department of the University of Theatre and Film Arts in Budapest. His short films Forest and Provincia and have been selected to major international film festivals such as Berlinale and Cannes (Berlinale shorts and Cinefondation). Guerilla is his first feature film.

Supported by the Hungarian National Film Fund.

HNFF Incubator Program selection

FESTIVAL 2019 – Göteborg International Film Festival – world premiere

HAPPY NEW YEAR (BÚÉK)

97 min, 2018

Director: Krisztina Goda Main cast: Tamás Lengyel, Franciska Törőcsik, Ferenc Elek, Gábor Hevér, Viktória Szávai, Éva Bata, Béla Mészáros Producers: Péter Geszti, S. Tamás Zákonyi Production company: Flashback Ltd. Festivals: kati.vajda@filmalap.hu, marta.benyei@filmalap.hu

A group of friends have been celebrating New Year’s Eve together for years. After a serious conversation about cell phones’ secrets everybody puts their cell phones on the table, and anyone who receives a call, a text message, an email or a picture or audio message has to share it with the others. The game starts out playfully but quickly turns serious when secrets, lies and betrayals that have been kept hidden come to light…

Based on the film entitled Perfetti sconosciuti, whose original script was written by Paolo Genovese, whose original screenplay was written by Filippo Bologna, Paolo Costello, Paolo Genovese, Paolo Mammini and Rolando Ravello, and which was directed by Paolo Genovese and produced by Medusa Film S.p.A. Krisztina Goda has directed several award-winning short films as well as a documentary and television commercials. Just Sex and Nothing Else was her debut work as a feature film director. The romantic comedy starring Judit Schell, Kata Dobó and Sándor Csányi was an outstanding success in Hungarian cinemas, reaching more than 500 000 viewers. Her second feature film was about the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, called Children of Glory, which was produced by Andrew G. Vajna.

Supported by the Hungarian National Film Fund

FEATURES

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HIER (Tegnap) 118 min, 2018 First Feature Film Director: Bálint Kenyeres Main cast: Vlad Ivanov, Djemel Barek, Jacques Weber, Gamil Ratib, Johanna Ter Steege, Toulou Kiki, Feodor Atkine, Jo Prestia, Isaka Sawadogo Producers: Andrea Taschler, Jamila Wenske Production company: Mirage Film Festivals: kati.vajda@filmalap.hu, marta.benyei@filmalap.hu Sales: klaudia.androsovits@filmalap.hu, orr.krisztina@filmalap.hu

The main character, 50-year-old Victor Ganz, owns a thriving building and civil engineering company that operates worldwide. Some very costly problems on a building site in North Africa mean he has to go there (he hates traveling), to a country where he is confronted with memories of his youth which have been carefully buried in the depths of his mind. Meetings in ministries, disinformation, the reappearance of a past love who had mysteriously disappeared, and an investigation in the local underground to find her: Victor Ganz slowly plunges into a labyrinthine world where present and past intertwine.

Bálint Kenyeres has been in competition with shorts in Cannes, Venice, Sundance and 200 other film festivals.

He is the winner of the European Film Academy Awards as well as 60 other international awards.

Supported by the Hungarian National Film Fund.

FESTIVALS 2018 - Locarno Film Festival - Filmmakers of the Present Competition 2018 - Utrecht Netherlands Film Festival 2018 - Marosvásárhely Alter-Native International Film Festival 2018 - Marrakech International Film Festival

FEATURES

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HIS MASTER’S VOICE (Az Úr hangja) 108 min, 2018 Director: György Pálfi Main cast: Csaba Polgár, Eric Peterson, Ádám Fekete, Diána Magdolna Kiss, Angelo Tsarouchas, Ildikó Bánsági, Kate Vernon Producers: Ferenc Pusztai, Michael A. Dobbin Production company: KMH Film, Quiet Revolution Pictures Festivals: kati.vajda@filmalap.hu, marta.benyei@filmalap.hu Sales: klaudia.androsovits@filmalap.hu, orr.krisztina@filmalap.hu

Our main character, Péter, is in his late thirties when he thinks he recognises his father in a documentary about a mysterious accident. His father deserted Communist Hungary in the 70s, a criminal offense under that regime, and has not been heard of since. Péter travels to the United States and, after an eventful investigation, finds his father with his new family. The reunion brings plenty of experiences and teaches several lessons to both father and son. As a consequence the world is informed that the mute universe has spoken and that we are not alone.

György Pálfi is a director and writer known for Hukkle (2002), Taxidermia (2006) and Szabadesés (2014).

Supported by the Hungarian National Film Fund.

FESTIVALS 2018 – Tokyo International Film Festival 2018 – Trieste Science+Fiction Film Festival 2018 – Toronto International Film Festival

HOPE YOU’LL DIE NEXT TIME :) (Remélem legközelebb sikerül meghalnod :) ) 96 min, 2018 First Feature Film

LAJKO - GYPSY IN SPACE (Lajkó - Cigány az űrben) 90 min, 2018 First Feature Film

Director: Mihály Schwechtje Main cast: Szilvia Herr, Kristóf Vajda, Csaba Polgár Producers: Ferenc Pusztai, Viktória Petrányi Production company: KMH Film Festivals, sales: linda.pfeiffer@kmhfilm.com

Director: Balázs Lengyel Main cast: Tamás Keresztes, József Gyabronka, Tibor Pálffy, Anna Böger, László Fehér, Beniuk Bohdan Producers: Ferenc Pusztai Production company: KMH Film Festivals: kati.vajda@filmalap.hu, marta.benyei@filmalap.hu Sales: klaudia.androsovits@filmalap.hu, orr.krisztina@filmalap.hu

16-year-old Eszter is secretly in love with her English teacher, while Peter, also 16, is hopelessly in love with Eszter. One day the teacher announces that he is leaving the school to move to London. That same day, Eszter receives a farewell email from him. An online affair begins and spirals into sexual abuse.

This black comedy allows us to learn that the first living being in 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 decided 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 an unexplored infinity with the outer 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 set to come true…

Mihály Schwechtje is a director and writer also known for Hideg berek (2008) and Szép magyar szó-kép-tár (2010).

FESTIVALS 2018 - Montreal World Film Festival 2018 – Cottbus Film Festival 2018 - Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

Balázs Lengyel is a Hungarian writer-director who has worked as a writer on several features and TV projects, including the award-winning HBO series Golden Life.

Lajkó - Gypsy in Space is his directorial debut.

Supported by the Hungarian National Film Fund.

FESTIVALS AND AWARDS 2018 - Trieste Science+Fiction Film Festival Audience Award 2018 - Warsaw International Film Festival 2018 - Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

FEATURES

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ONE DAY (Egy nap) 99 min, 2018 First Feature Film

OPEN (Nyitva) 98 min, 2018 First Feature Film

Director: Zsófia Szilágyi Main cast: Zsófi Szamosi, Leo Füredi, Ambrus Barcza, Zorka Varga-Blaskó, Márk Gárdos, Annamária Láng, Éva Vándor, Károly Hajduk Producers: Ági Pataki, Edina Kenesei Production company: Filmpartners Festivals & Sales: Films Boutique contact@filmsboutique.com

Director: Orsi Nagypál Main cast: Csilla Radnay, Lehel Kovács Producers: Gábor Kálomista, Dorottya Helmeczy Production company: Megafilm Festivals: kati.vajda@filmalap.hu, marta.benyei@filmalap.hu Sales: klaudia.androsovits@filmalap.hu, orr.krisztina@filmalap.hu

Anna is 40. She is always in a rush. She has three children, a husband, a job and financial stress. Anna meets deadlines, makes promises, takes care of things, brings stuff home and remembers everything. But she never catches up with her husband. She’d like to talk to him. She feels she is losing him. And she feels she can’t always evade what comes next. A clash between the everyday, the unbearably monotonous and the fragile and unique.

This is a relationship dramedy about a couple in their 30s adventuring through the confusing thrills of nonmonogamy. Hoping to escape the seemingly inevitable cheatings and betrayals, Fanni and Bálint come up with a desperate plan to save their loving but sexually deflated relationship by simply opening it. Hand in hand, they take a big splash into the brave new world of 21st-century dating, realising too late that the waves can be quite murky and overwhelming. What at first seems like awkward fun later becomes a dangerous and painful game of trust and emotions. The film explores the challenges of modern-day mating from a strong female point of view, dealing with gender roles and our (false) expectations of sex and relationships, with quirky humour and honesty.

Zsófia Szilágyi graduated from the University of Pécs, she continued her education as a film and TV director at the Academy of Film and Drama. She casting directed Ildiko Enyedi’s Oscar-nominated On Body and Soul. One Day is her first feature film and was selected at the Critics’s Week in Cannes in 2018.

Supported by the Hungarian National Film Fund.

HNFF Incubator Program selection

FESTIVALS AND AWARDS 2018 - Cannes Film Festival - Critics’ Week - FIPRESCI Prize 2018 - Art Film Fest Košice, Best Actress: Zsófi Szamosi 2018 - Sarajevo Film Festival, Best Actress: Zsófi Szamosi 2018 – Luxembourg CinEast, Grand Prix 2018 - Cairo International Film Festival, Best Actress: Zsófi Szamosi 2018 - Sydney Film Festival 2018 - Wroclaw New Horizons IFF 2018 - Copenhagen CPH:PIX 2018 - Hamptons International Film Festival 2018 - Los Angeles AFI Fest 2018 - Bydgoszcz Camerimage 2018 - Gijon International Film Festival 2018 - Nominated for European Film Awards Discovery Prize

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Orsi Nagypál is a Hungarian filmmaker who escaped the glitzy world of advertising to study at the London Film School. Since 2011 she has been busy directing short films and TV shows commissioned by HBO Europe and the Hungarian National TV. Her shorts have screened at festivals like Clermont-Ferrand and she has developed her projects at Binger, Ekran, Sources2, Sarajevo City of Film and the Berlinale Coprod market. She is most interested in everyday heroes, human sexuality and how we find our true selves whilst struggling with the constraints of our societies. Open is her first feature film.

Supported by the Hungarian National Film Fund.

FESTIVALS AND AWARDS 2018 - Montreal World Film Festival Canada - world premiere 2018 - Luxembourg Cinéast 2018 - Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival Best Movie, Best Foreign Film

SUNSET (Napszállta) 142 min, 2018

X-THE EXPLOITED (X - A rendszerből törölve) 114 min, 2018

Director: László Nemes Main cast: Juli Jakab, Vlad Ivanov, Evelin Dobos, Marcin Czarnik Producers: Gábor Sipos, Gábor Rajna Production company: Laokoon Filmgroup, Playtime Production Festivals: joris@playtime.group Sales: frederique@playtime.group

Director: Károly Ujj Mészáros Main cast: Móni Balsai, Zoltán Schmied, Zsófi Bujáki, János Kulka, Szabolcs Bede-Fazekas Producers: András Muhi, Gábor Ferenczy Production company: Focusfox Studio Festivals: kati.vajda@filmalap.hu, marta.benyei@filmalap.hu Sales: klaudia.androsovits@filmalap.hu, orr.krisztina@filmalap.hu

1913, Budapest, in the heart of Europe. The young Irisz Leiter arrives in the Hungarian capital with high hopes of working as a milliner at the legendary hat store that belonged to her late parents. She is nonetheless sent away by the new owner, Oszkár Brill. While preparations are underway at the Leiter hat store to host guests of uttermost importance, a man comes to Irisz out of the blue, looking for a certain Kálmán Leiter. Refusing to leave the city, the young woman follows Kálmán’s tracks, her only link to a lost past. Her quest brings her through the dark streets of Budapest, where only the Leiter hat store shines, into the turmoil of a civilisation on the eve of its downfall.

Who would believe that a policewoman suffering from such serious panic disorders is afraid to get near any crime scene and so has been on permanent office duty for more than a decade? Who would believe a lone mother who is unfit to pay her mortgage and raise her rebellious teenage daughter? Indeed, no one believes that this troubled woman has discovered a serial murder case. Personal dramas and a murder mystery unfold in present-day Budapest, where the demonstrations of an angry new generation are part of the pre-election life of a city; where both the old and the recent past still haunts its people, resulting in concealed and horrendous crimes. It is a city where nothing seems honest or true, except an emotionally unstable policewoman and her misfit daughter who wants to know who her father truly was.

László Nemes was born in 1977 in Budapest, Hungary.

His first feature, Son of Saul, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2015, was awarded the Grand Prix, and later received both the Golden Globe and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2016.

Supported by the Hungarian National Film Fund.

FESTIVALS AND AWARDS 2018 - Venice International Film Festival - FIPRESCI Prize 2018 - Seville Film Festival - Best European Co-Production 2018 - Toronto International Film Festival 2018 - London Film Festival 2018 - Busan International Film Festival 2018 - Zurich Film Festival 2018 - Arras L’Autre Cinema 2018 - Stockholm International Film Festival 2018 - Segovia Muces

Born in 1968, Károly Ujj-Mészáros has made 10 short features, has won 12 prizes at more than 30 national and international short film festivals, has shot over 200 commercials over the last 15 years and has directed two plays. He also has a university degree in economics.

Supported by the Hungarian National Film Fund.

FESTIVALS AND AWARDS 2018 - Braunschweig International Film Festival Volkswagen Main Prize 2018 - Warsaw International Film Festival 2018 - Chicago International Film Festival 2018 - Ghent Flanders International Film Festival

FEATURES

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RUBEN BRANDT, COLLECTOR (Ruben Brandt, a gyűjtő) 94 min, 2018 First Feature Film Director: Milorad Krstic Main voices: Iván Kamarás, Zalán Makranczi, Gabriella Hámori Producers: Péter Miskolczi, Radmila Roczkov, Hermina Roczkov, János Kurdy-Fehér Production company: Ruben Brandt Production Festivals: kati.vajda@filmalap.hu, marta.benyei@filmalap.hu Sales: klaudia.androsovits@filmalap.hu, orr.krisztina@filmalap.hu

Ruben Brandt, a famous psychotherapist, is forced to steal 13 paintings from world-renowned museums and private collections to prevent his suffering from terrible nightmares. Accompanied by four of his patients, he and his gang of thieves strike regularly and with great success: The Louvre, Tate, Uffizi, Hermitage, MoMA. ‘The Collector’ quickly becomes the most wanted criminal.

Milorad Krstic is a central European artist who was born in Slovenia in 1952. Since 1989 he has been living and working in Budapest, Hungary, as a painter and multimedia artist. For his first short animated film My Baby Left Me he was awarded the Berlinale Silver Bear in 1995, and for his interactive CD-ROM ‘Das Anatomische Theater’ he won the Best Interactive Project Award at Annecy MIFA in 1999.

FESTIVALS AND AWARDS 2018 - Bucharest Anim’Est - Best Feature Film 2018 - Seville Film Festival - Best Screenplay, CICAE Prize for Best First Film, ASECAN Prize for Best Feature Film 2018 - Locarno International Film Festival 2018 - Sarajevo Film Festival 2018 - Haifa International Film Festival 2018 - Copenhagen CPH:PIX 2018 - Vancouver International Film Festival 2018 - Chicago International Film Festival 2018 - Warsaw International Film Festival 2018 - Luxembourg Cinéast 2018 - Mumbai International Film Festival 2018 - Adana International Film Festival 2018 - Animation is Film Festival 2018 - Ankara Festival on Wheels 2018 - Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival 2018 - Talinn Black Nights Film Festival 2019 - Göteborg International Film Festival

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WILLY AND THE GUARDIANS OF THE LAKE - TALES FROM THE LAKESIDE: WINTER ADVENTURE (Lengemesék 2 - Tél a nádtengeren) 70 min, 2018 Director: Zsolt Pálfi Producer: Réka Temple Production company: Cinemon Entertainment Festivals: krisztina@cinemon-entertainment.com Sales: reka@cinemon-entertainment.com

The green Verdies are tiny yet brave guardians of the lakeside. Verdies only become guardians when they reach an age at which their hair turns brown, but until then life is boring. The green-haired youngsters are not allowed to fly on warblers to row boats alone on the lake or even to ride wild frogs at the rodeo.

Willy Whistle’s dream is to become a guardian, but his curiosity always gets him into trouble. When the enemies of the lakeside - the Grimps and the Swans - enter into alliance and put the entire lake at risk, Willy has a chance to show everyone his value. As the guardians are helpless against these enemies, Willy proves that with his secret inventions, like the storm glider and the plastic bottle motorboat, he can save the lake while at the same time protect the environment.

As autumn arrives at last as the birds set out for their long flight to a warmer climate, we follow the change of season through the eyes of the Verdies. Suddenly the water rats launch a terrible attack against them and against all creatures around the lake. The two nations, Grimps and Verdies, have been enemies as long as anyone can remember, but now their only chance against the rats is to join forces against this attack.

Nothing can stop Willy from achieving his lifelong dream of becoming a guardian. Packed with plenty of adventure and appealing characters, we witness Willy Whistle in his struggle from green-haired youth to maturing into brown-haired adulthood. Along the way, Willy’s antics actually inspire us with his sense of loyalty, responsibility, generosity and tolerance.

Born in 1972 in Budapest, Zsolt Pálfi has contributed to dozens of animated projects as animator, animation supervisor and director. Besides directing Tales from the Lakeside he has been the animation supervisor for feature films such as The Legends of King Solomon, the international series The travels of the Young Marco Polo and Zanza.tv.

TREZOR 75 min, 2018

THE ACTRESS (A színésznő) 80 min, 2018

Director: Péter Bergendy Main cast: Zsolt Anger, Peter Scherer, Bence Tasnádi, Zoltán Bezerédy, József Varga, Gabriella Hámori Producer: Tamás Lajos Production company: Szupermodern Stúdió Festivals: kati.vajda@filmalap.hu, marta.benyei@filmalap.hu Sales: klaudia.androsovits@filmalap.hu, orr.krisztina@filmalap. hu

Director: László Vitézy Main cast: Viktória Szávai, Ildikó Tóth, Bálint Adorjáni, Csaba Pindroch Producer: Gábor Kálomista Production company: Megafilm Festivals, sales: kalomista.imre@megafilm.hu

The keys to the vault of the Ministry of Internal Affairs are lost in the confusion of the 1956 Revolution. And so, only a few days after the battle for independence is violently put down, the police pull a former bank robber out of prison and ask him to open their own uncrackable safe. The convict, however, finds something very different behind the vault’s door than what he had expected. An exciting plot unfolds, full of unexpected twists, where nothing and no one is what they seem to be.

Péter Bergendy has been one of the leading directors in cutting-edge advertising in Hungary for the last two decades. He picked up all the major national awards in advertising and his feature film The Exam was awarded the Gold Hugo prize for newcomer director at the Chicago International Film Festival. He is also known for his feature films Stop Mom Theresa! (2004) and Trezor (2018).

A beautiful and talented actress is Hungary’s most celebrated star. She is at the height of her career, and she is falling in love. But she must face the ruthless rules of the communist dictatorship, which she is not prepared to accept. Can she escape revenge? This film is based on actual events.

After graduating from the Academy of Drama and Film in Budapest, László Vitézy founded the unique documentary-like style known as “Budapest School”.

He has directed more than thirty feature films and documentaries and has won several awards.

Supported by the Media Patronage Programme of the Hungarian Media Council.

Supported by the Media Patronage Programme of the Hungarian Media Council.

TV DRAMA

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EASY LESSONS (Könnyű leckék) 78 min, 2018 First Film Director: Dorottya Zurbó Main cast: Kafia Said Mahdi Producers: Julianna Ugrin Production company: Éclipse Film Festivals and sales: aleksandar@syndicado.com

Kafia is 17 years old. Three years ago she fled to Hungary on her own, escaping from a child marriage in Somalia. She has been living in a children’s home in Budapest ever since. She learns the language, goes to high school, prepares for the Hungarian graduation exam and has started a modelling career. On the surface, everything seems fine. However, behind that beautiful and confident appearance lies a heavy heart.

Her repetitive daily routine revolves around constant dilemmas and self-doubt about leaving behind her Muslim culture and everything she grew up with. The film slowly becomes an intimate confession. What does it mean, on the brink of adulthood, to break with your past and fully give yourself up to a new self in order to live in Europe?

Dorottya Zurbó is a D.L.A. student at the University of Theatre and Film Arts in Budapest where she is also a lecturer in the field of transmedia and documentary.

Her short films have won several awards and have been screened in many festivals. She co-directed a documentary (The Next Guardian; 2017) shot in Bhutan which was premiered at IDFA in the First Appearance Competition and participated in many international festivals so far.

Supported by the Hungarian National Film Fund.

HNFF Incubator Program selection

FESTIVALS 2018 - Sarajevo Film Festival 2018 - Locarno Film Festival 2018 - Sibiu Astra Film Fest

FEATURES DOC

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GHETTO BALBOA (Gettó Balboa) 84 min, 2018 Director: Árpád Bogdán Main cast: Mihály Sipos, Zoltán Szabó Producers: László Józsa, Ildikó Kosztolni, Attila Ponczók, Gábor Ferenczi Production company: IAMNEWHERE Ltd. Festivals,sales: jl@speakeasyproject.com

A former mafioso of the infamous Budapest Ghetto has been teaching boxing to the poor young children of the neighbourhood for the past eight years. One of his students fights his way up to box for a world championship belt. He is given the chance to prove to his comrades that there may be a way out of the ghetto. Árpád Bogdán lived in a children’s home from the age of four. During his university years he worked as an actor and stage director in various theatres. His directorial debut, Happy New Life (2007), premiered in the Panorama section at Berlinale in 2007 and the film was internationally acclaimed. His latest featurelength fiction, Genesis, premiered at Berlinale in 2018 and won a number of awards in Sofia and in Valencia.

FESTIVAL 2018 - Sarajevo Film Festival

GRANNY PROJECT (Nagyi projekt) 90 min, 2018 First Film Director: Bálint Révész Cast: Rosanne Cholchester, Gudrun Dechamps, Lívia Révész, Meredith Cholchester, Ruben Woodin-Dechamps, Bálint Révész Producers: László Kántor, Bálint Révész Production companies: Új Budapest Filmstúdió, Gallivant Film Festivals: kati.vajda@filmalap.hu, marta.benyei@filmalap.hu Sales: rev.balint@gmail.com

Granny Project is a seven-year-long investigation of three young men coming to terms with their heritage through the extraordinary lives of their grandmothers: an English spy, a dancer from Nazi Germany and a Hungarian communist Holocaust survivor.

The three men move back and forth across Europe at the same time as their grandmothers set off on a virtual journey down memory lane. They transport their grannies back to their youth and in doing so provide us with insight into the transcendental connection between grandparents and grandchildren at the turn of the 21st century.

Bálint Révész is the founder of the London-based Gallivant Film collective and the producer behind Another News Story, a doc in competition at, among others, KVIFF and ZFF, and presented at IDFA in 2017.

Supported by the Hungarian National Film Fund.

FESTIVALS AND AWARDS 2018 - ZagrebDox 2018 - Taiwan International Documentary Festival Next Generation Award 2017 - DOK Leipzig - MDR Award

A WOMAN CAPTURED (Egy nő fogságban) 89 min, 2017 Director: Bernadett Tuza-Ritter Producers: Julianna Ugrin, Viki Réka Kiss Production company: Éclipse Film Festivals: viki.reka@gmail.com Sales: aleksandar@syndicado.com

A Woman Captured is about Marish, a 52-yearold Hungarian woman who has been serving the same family for a decade, working 20 hours a day without getting paid. Her ID was taken from her by her oppressors and she is not allowed to leave the house without permission. Treated like an animal, she only gets leftovers to eat and no bed to sleep in. Marish spends her days with fear in her heart, but never lets go of her dream of getting her life back. The presence of the camera helps her realise she isn’t completely alone. She begins to show signs of trust; after 2 years of shooting, she musters up enough courage to reveal her plan: “I am going to escape.” The film follows Marish’s heroic journey back to freedom.

Bernadett Tuza-Ritter studied directing and editing at the University of Theatre and Film Arts in Budapest.

In 2013 she worked as a director in the project called ‘Cinetrain – Russian Winter’, which won the Audience Award at the Vision du Réel documentary festival. Her first feature-length documentary, A Woman Captured was the first Hungarian feature-length film to ever compete at Sundance.

SELECTED FESTIVALS AND AWARDS 2018 - Sundance Film Festival 2018 - ZagrebDox 2017 - International Documentary Filmfestival Amsterdam NOMINATED FOR BEST EUROPEAN DOCUMENTARY AWARD by the European Film Academy

FEATURES DOC

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NINE MONTH WAR (Kilenc Hónap Háború) 72 min, 2018

VETERANFILM (Veteránfilm) 50 min, 2018

Director: László Csuja Main cast: János Lelics, Erzsébet Lelics, Zsanett Pál Producers: Ágnes Horváth Szabó, András Pires Muhi Production company: ELF Pictures, Filmpartners Festivals, sales: Ina Rossow info@deckert-distribution.com

Director: Csaba Hernáth Main cast: János Szentiványi, Endre Frankó Producers: László Józsa Production company: Speak Easy Project Festivals, sales: jl@speakeasyproject.com

Nine Month War tells the story of a mother and her son Jani living in the shadows of the military conflict between Ukraine and Russia. Combining visuals of cinema verité and mobile footage of war, Jani’s fight for adulthood unfolds over the nine months of his military service and the time after his discharge.

Veteranfilm introduces two special elderly flightenthusiasts. They survived the horrors of World War 2 as fighter pilots and endured the socialist era as well.

They were never led by political ideologies but found their happiness among the circumstances of the time.

Their cheerful wisdom is an unmissable example.

László Csuja lives in Hungary. His debut feature Blossom Valley was awarded in Karlovy Vary. Nine Month War is his first feature-length documentary.

Csaba Hernáth is co-owner, cinematographer and editor of the Speak Easy Project. He was a key crew member of ULTRA (DOP, assistant editor) and the editor of Ghetto Balboa. His first direction is Veteranfilm.

FESTIVALS AND AWARDS 2018 - Sarajevo Film Festival - Special Jury Prize 2018 - Tehran Cinéma Vérité IDF - Jury Special Mention 2018 - DOK Leipzig - International Programme

TV DOC

66

Supported by the Media Patronage Programme of the Hungarian Media Council

FESTIVAL AND AWARD 2018 - Karelian International Film for Youth Festival Best Documentary

THREE DANCES (Három tánc) 78 / 52 min, 2018 Director: Glória Halász Cast: students of the Hungarian Dance Academy Producer: Gábor Osváth Production company: Filmfabriq Festivals: info@filmfabriq.hu Sales: arianna.castoldi@groupe-ab.fr

A documentary about three generations of ballet dancers studying classical ballet at the Hungarian Dance Academy.

The film first takes a look at each student when they enter the institution at 10 years of age and then again when they leave as professional ballet dancers nine years later.

Glória Halász (Budapest, 1985) studied at the Faculty of Film and Media at Budapest Eötvös Loránd University.

Topics that contemplate where art meets social issues are of particular interest for her. Her previous films include Iron Curtain (2011), Dr. Lala (2014) and What a Circus! (2016).

Supported by the Media Patronage Programme of the Hungarian Media Council.

WILD BALATON - ON THE SHORES OF THE ‘HUNGARIAN SEA’ (Vad Balaton) 60 min, 2018 Director: Szabolcs Mosonyi Producer: Erika Bagladi Production company: NatFilm Hungary Kft. Festivals: natfilmhungary@gmail.com Sales: vik.dudas@gmail.com

Lake Balaton is the largest lake in central Europe.

Although during the summer the coast is crowded with people in their holiday homes, the lake and its surroundings offer almost unbelievable natural treasures. The volcanoes, the lake caves, the travertine dams, the sand dunes and the valleys of canyons are all part of the European Geoparks Network, and the huge wetland habitats are unique in the whole of Europe. Ground squirrel and wildcat, peregrine falcon and raven, nesting herons and egrets in huge numbers, edible dormouse taking off for night-time adventures and asps dancing. The unusual marriage of geology, wildlife and man created this dazzling landscape.

Supported by the Media Patronage Programme of the Hungarian Media Council.

EDU DOC

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BEST GAME EVER (A legjobb játék) 20 min, 2018

CHUCHOTAGE (Susotázs) 16 min, 2018

Director: Kristóf Deák Main cast: Tamás Rétfalvi, Irén Szabó Producer: László Dreissiger, Anna Udvardy, Gábor Osváth Production companies: Meteor-Film, Filmfabriq Festivals, sales: shorts@neweuropefilmsales.com, marcin@ neweuropefilmsales.com

Director: Barnabás Tóth Main cast: Pál Göttinger, Géza Takács, Andrea Osvárt Producers: Andrea Kuczkó, Gábor Rajna, Lajos Tóth Production companies: Csokonai Ksk., Laokoon Filmgroup Festivals: Markus Kaatsch, Aug&Ohr Agency / markus@augohr.de

When two CCTV technicians find out that an AI machine is a threat to their jobs, they must take action to beat the system, leading them to an unexpected solution.

During a professional conference in Prague, two simultaneous interpreters in the Hungarian booth realise that only one person is listening to them.

Supported by the Media Patronage Programme of the Hungarian Media Council.

SELECTED FESTIVALS AND AWARDS

SELECTED FESTIVALS AND AWARDS 2018 - Friss Hús Budapest International Short Film Festival, Special Mention 2018 - BREST European Short Film Festival, Audience Award, Passeurs Des Courts Award, Jury Special Mention 2018 - Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

SHORT FILM

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2018 - Friss Hús Budapest International Short Film Festival 2018 - Rhode Island International Film Festival, Best Comedy Short 2018 – Oscars - Shortlisted in Best Live Action Short Film category

FORTY YEARS (Negyven év) 16 min, 2018

LAST CALL 27 min, 2018

Director: Anna Gyimesi Cast: Erzsébet Ecsedi, Miklós Székely B., Gerda Pikali Producer: Miklós Bosnyák Production company: University of Theatre and Film Arts Budapest Festivals, sales: orr.krisztina@filmalap.hu, marta.benyei@ filmalap.hu, kati.vajda@filmalap.hu

Director: Hajni Kis Main cast: Kati Zsurzs Producer: Gábor Garami, Miklós Bosnyák Co-producers: Juli Berkes, Gábor Osváth Production company: University of Theatre and Film Arts Budapest, Cinema-Film, Proton Cinema, Filmfabriq Festivals, sales: info@filmfabriq.hu

The film focuses on Ica and Imre, a couple in their midsixties. Ica prepares herself for death, which her husband cannot accept. After a while he realises that he is unable to do anything, so resigns to the inevitable. During the time they have left, Imre tries to make Ica happy, the way he has been for the last forty years, with more or less success.

This film follows the last day of Anikó Kárpáti (61) as she prepares to leave Budapest so that she can be closer to her daughter’s family. She begins a mad dash through the city in order to close the chapter of her life in Hungary.

Supported by the Hungarian National Film Fund.

FESTIVAL 2018 - Targu-Mures Alter-Native Film Festival

Supported by the Hungarian National Film Fund.

SELECTED FESTIVALS AND AWARDS 2018 - Friss Hús Budapest International Short Film Festival, Best Short Film Award 2018 - Sarajevo Film Festival, Best Student Film 2018 - Slow Film Festival, Best Short Film, Audience Award

SHORT FILM

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NEXT WEDNESDAY (Jövő szerdán) 13 min, 2018

PIGEONBERRY (Varjúháj) 19 min, 2018

Director: Norbert Molvay Cast: Andrea Waskovics, Barbara Szitás, Zoltán Géczi, Réka Gerlits, Orsolya Kálóczi, Alexa Bakonyi, Ilona Laczkó Producers: Marcell Simó, Norbert Molvay Festivals: marta.benyei@filmalap.hu, kati.vajda@filmalap.hu, orr.krisztina@filmalap.hu Sales: nrmolvay@yahoo.com

Director: Pici Pápai Main cast: Leonárd Bódis, Zsolt Nagy, Eszter Bánfalvi, Lehel Kovács, Chloé Keresztes Producers: András Ozorai, Pici Pápai Production company: Új Neuropa Studio Festivals: marta.benyei@filmalap.hu, kati.vajda@filmalap.hu, orr.krisztina@filmalap.hu Sales: papaipici@gmail.con

A young girl with a dark secret tries to relieve her heavy heart by taking a walk in the city. She visits places and meets people she would not otherwise wish to in order to find her redemption.

The hero of Pigeonberry is a young boy who attributes his mother’s severe illness and his own distress to the wrongdoing of dark, mysterious forces. He is convinced that this threat can only be overcome by his occult intervention and the implementation of white magic witchcraft. His father is also desperate, fearing losing his wife, which leads to him being impatient with his son and locking himself up. In order to help the beloved woman who is at the centre of their lives, they must first find the way back to each other…

FESTIVALS 2018 - Montreal World Film Festival 2018 - Asiana International Short Film Festival

Supported by the Media Patronage Programme of the Hungarian Media Council.

FESTIVAL 2018 - Montreal World Film Festival

SHORT FILM

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READY OR NOT (Aki bújt) 11 min, 2018

SUPERDAD (SzuperApu) 13 min, 2019

Director: Mihály Schwechtje Main cast: Marcell Miklós, Ádám Káté, Lajos Jónás, Abigél Dömötör, György Czabán, Melinda Megyes Producers: Tamás Noveczky, Genovéva Petrovits Production companies: Riot Pictures, Studio Patent Festivals: Tamás Noveczky / tamas@riotpictures.hu, Genovéva Petrovits / genoveva@studiopatent.com Sales: mf@premium-films.com

Director: András Petrik Main cast: Béla Mészáros, Szabolcs Thuróczy, Lili Barkóczi, Lajos Ottó Horváth Producers: Peter Roskó, Csaba Vékes, Ákos Schneider Production company: Blue Duck Arts Festivals: kati.vajda@filmalap.hu, marta.benyei@filmalap.hu, orr.krisztina@filmalap.hu Sales: peter.rosko@gmail.com

Playing hide and seek in a village ruled by poverty.

Characters are eliminated by dependency and misery.

Happiness and disillusionment as seen from the point of view of young innocence.

András is a thirty-something careerist prosecutor. His new job is important for him, but his wife and daughter suffer the consequences. One day he receives his most important task yet: to follow and jot down every move that a well-known criminal makes before his arrest.

Zsolt Denes is a well-connected entrepreneur criminal.

He is aware of the date of his arrest and has a plan to spare his son from seeing it. When the day of the arrest comes, András is surprised and learns an important lesson about being a father.

András Petrik studied cinematography at the German Film and Television Academy in Berlin. After graduating in 2008 he made documentaries, short fiction films and commercial spots. He is an award-winning director and cinematographer as recognised by main international film festivals. SuperDad was partly inspired by his own experiences as a father.

Supported by the Media Patronage Programme of the Hungarian Media Council.

FESTIVALS 2018 - Friss Hús Budapest International Short Film Festival 2018 - Asiana International Short Film Festival 2018 - Y.EAST Festival

Supported by the Media Patronage Programme of the Hungarian Media Council.

SHORT FILM

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A SIEGE (Ostrom) 23 min, 2018 Director: István Kovács Main cast: Vedrana Bozinovic, Mirela Lambic, Radoje Cupic, Nenad Pecinar, Zsolt Trill Producers: Mónika Mécs, Ernő Mesterházy, Nóra Alföldi, István Kovács Co-producers: Miklós Bosnyák, Tamás Hutlassa, Barnabás Hutlassa, Gábor Osváth Production companies: University of Theatre and Film Arts of Budapest, Inforg-M&M Film, Film Force Team, Filmfabriq Festivals, sales: info@filmfabriq.hu

Sarajevo, 1994. A lonely woman in the war-torn city embarks on a journey to find water, and neither the neighbours nor sniper fire can do anything to stop her.

Supported by the Hungarian National Film Fund.

SELECTED FESTIVALS AND AWARDS 2018 - Friss Hús Budapest International Short Film Festival, Special Mention 2018 - American Film Academy, Bronze Student Oscar 2018 – Luxembourg CinEast, Audience Award for Best Short Film

SHORT FILM

72

WORK IN PROGRESS (Átalakítás folyamatban) 20 min, 2018 Director: Cristina Grosan Main cast: Katalin Takács, János Bán, Júlia Huzella, Nóra Rainer-Micsinyei Producer: Dora Nedeczky Production company: Mindwax Festivals, sales: Dora Nedeczky / dora@mindwax.eu

Mimi enters a bizarre beauty clinic with a voucher for a facelift that she got from her husband. She checks into the former hotel by the shores of a secluded lake and a whole new world opens up to her: older women, men and animals await their transformation.

Supported by the Media Patronage Programme of the Hungarian Media Council.

FESTIVALS 2018 - Friss Hús Budapest International Short Film Festival 2018 - Helsinki International Film Festival - Love & Anarchy

ENTROPIA 10 min, 2018

THE FALL OF ROME (Róma bukása) 23 min, 2018

Director: Flóra Anna Buda Producers: József Fülöp Production company: Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design Budapest Festivals: glaser@mome.hu, marta.benyei@filmalap.hu, kati. vajda@filmalap.hu Sales: orr.krisztina@filmalap.hu

Director: Balázs Turai Producers: Péter B. Lukács, Gábor Osváth, Drasko Ivezic Production companies: Boddah, Adriatic Animation Festivals, sales: gabor@boddah.hu

Entropia presents three parallel universes where three girls live in different circumstances. One of them represents the animalistic side of human nature, another is a consumer fulfilled with her own frustrations, and the third lives in a futuristic room where she has to keep running to keep the system functional. Suddenly a fly flies over the three universes and creates a bug in the system, meaning the girls are able to move towards each other, meet and melt in a peaceful idyll while the whole universe collapses around them.

Under constant threat from the mutant frog-people, Carl and Cynthia desperately try to maintain a ‘normal’ life inside their post-apocalyptic Dome. Meanwhile, their children venture outside the safety zone and befriend the ever-lurking Enemy.

Supported by the Media Patronage Programme of the Hungarian Media Council.

2018 - Friss Hús Budapest International Short Film Festival 2018 - KLIK Amsterdam Animation Festival 2018 – Ljubljana Animateka, International Animated Film Festival

FESTIVAL 2019 – Berlinale Shorts – world premiere

Supported by the Media Patronage Programme of the Hungarian Media Council.

FESTIVALS

SHORT ANIMATION

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THE LAST SUPPER (Az utolsó vacsora) 10 min, 2019

MATCHES 11 min, 2019

Director: Ferenc Rófusz Producer: Zsófia Hajdú, Ferenc Rófusz Production company: Rófuszfilm Kft. Festivals: kati.vajda@filmalap.hu, marta.benyei@filmalap.hu, orr. krisztina@filmalap.hu Sales: rofuszferenc@gmail.com

Director: Géza M. Tóth Producer: Éva M. Tóth Production company: KEDD Animation Studio Festivals: kati.vajda@filmalap.hu, marta.benyei@filmalap.hu, orr.krisztina@filmalap.hu Sales: reka@kedd.net

The idea of producing an animated rendition of Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper”, one of the greatest treasures of our western culture that illustrates the most venerated saga, is to inspire sentiment towards this unequaled masterpiece. To make this painting-animation, I intended to bring the attention to the sad fact that is the unstoppable perishing of this fresco.

Ferenc Rófusz was the recipient of the 1981 Oscar for his The Fly film, which he made with background animation. He has received numerous awards for his unconventional film-series and animated commercials.

Supported by the Media Patronage Programme of the Hungarian Media Council.

SHORT ANIMATION

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A lonely boy, playing with colourful matchsticks, talks about his dreams, fears and hopes. The matchsticks bring his visions to life. The film is based on an interview with a 7 year old.

Supported by the Media Patronage Programme of the Hungarian Media Council.

NOT YET (Még nem) 10 min, 2018

REMAKE 10 min, 2019

Director: Tímea Varga Producer: József Fülöp Production company: Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design Budapest Festivals: glaser@mome.hu, marta.benyei@filmalap.hu, kati. vajda@filmalap.hu Sales: orr.krisztina@filmalap.hu

Director: Béla Klingl Producers: Béla Klingl Production company: K.G.B. Stúdió Ltd. Festivals: kati.vajda@filmalap.hu, marta.benyei@filmalap.hu, orr.krisztina@filmalap.hu Sales: mail@kgbstudio.hu

Everyone goes home from the playhouse. A child waits for her mother who does not show up, so starts looking for her. Over varied locations we see two fates, two lives, which may never cross each other.

The story is based on the complete cycle of human life in a closed space, condensed within just a few minutes.

We see the protagonist’s life from beginning to end, from birth to old age, to death, and perhaps even further. Although the movie has just a single acting character, we see more characters who are actually our hero’s copies (older and younger), shifted in time.

Supported by the Hungarian National Film Fund.

FESTIVALS 2018 - Annecy International Animated Film Festival 2018 - Jameson CineFest Miskolc International Film Festival, CineNewWave 2018 - Anifilm - International Festival of Animated Films (Trebon)

Supported by the Media Patronage Programme of the Hungarian Media Council.

SHORT ANIMATION

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SOLAR WALK 21 min, 2018

TAKE ME PLEASE 14 min, 2018

Director: Réka Bucsi Producer: Morten Thorning Production company: The Animation Workshop/VIA University College Festivals, sales: zsofi@daazo.com

Director: Olivér Hegyi Producer: József Fülöp Production company: Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design Budapest Festivals: glaser@mome.hu, marta.benyei@filmalap.hu, kati. vajda@filmalap.hu Sales: orr.krisztina@filmalap.hu

Solar Walk presents a journey through space and the process of creation within an animated cosmic chaos.

This movie presents a breakup and everything that follows: boy is hesitant, girl gets bored, boy meets girl’s new boyfriend - which is a bit more shocking than expected. Boy wants to escape, as he believes his life is over, but then boy meets girl again and they fall in love.

But they have to finally admit that the relationship will not really work out.

SELECTED FESTIVALS AND AWARDS 2018 - Berlin International Film Festival, Audi Short Film Award 2018 - Ottawa International Animation Festival, Nelvana Grand Prize 2018 - South by Southwest Film Festival

Supported by the Hungarian National Film Fund

FESTIVALS AND AWARDS 2018 - Friss Hús Budapest International Short Film Festival, Best Hungarian Animation 2018 - Animafest Zagreb, Special Mention 2018 - Interfilm Berlin

While looking at an X-ray, a handsome young man is horrified to learn that the weird, tumour-like lump on his chest appears to be the top of a tiny plump man’s head.

Nested in his body, ready to be born…

MR. MARE (Lidérc úr) 19min, 2019 Director: Luca Tóth Producers: Péter Benjámin Lukács, Gábor Osváth, Ron Dyens Production companies: Boddah (HU), Sacrebleu (FR) Festivals, sales: gabor@boddah.hu

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Mr. Mare is a surreal animated chamber play set in a ‘haunted’ claustrophobic space in which we witness the dynamics of unrequited love as we follow the relationship of an oddly co-dependent pair.

FESTIVAL 2019 - Berlinale Shorts - world premiere

CANDIDE (Candide) 13 x 7 min, 2018

CASTAWAYS (Hajótöröttek) 13 x 7 min, 2018

Director: Zsuzsanna Kreif Voiceover artists: Gábor Máté, Adél Jordán, Zoltán Rajkai Producers: Károly Fehér, Brigitta Iványi-Bitter, Gábor Ferenczy, András Muhi, Réka Temple Production company: Popfilm Kft. Festivals: brigitta.ivanyi@gmail.com Sales: Frédéric Puech, Planet Nemo Company / frederic@ planetnemo.com

Director: Péter Szeiler Producers: Gábor Osváth, Péter Csornay Production company: Filmfabriq Festivals, sales: info@filmfabriq.hu

Devastating love, 2D blood, leper and hunt: Candide forever.

Castaways is a fun, 13-episode series of educational animated shorts about science, where each episode lasts 7 minutes. 10-year-old Kolos and his grandpa set out into the endless ocean to circumnavigate the Earth on their ship called Bella Donna. A violent storm suddenly descends on them as they sail across the Pacific, destroying their ship. Through enormous luck, Grandpa and his grandson land on a deserted island.

This is where the story of Castaways begins.

Supported by the Media Patronage Programme of the Hungarian Media Council.

FESTIVALS 2014 - Friss Hús Budapest International Short Film Festival 2016 - Annecy International Animated Film Festival 2018 - Anifilm

Supported by the Media Patronage Programme of the Hungarian Media Council.

FESTIVALS 2018 - Primanima World Festival of First Animations 2017 - KAFF Kecskemét Animation Film Festival

SHORT ANIMATION SERIES

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MEET US IN BERLIN

EUROPEAN FILM MARKET HUNGARIAN NATIONAL FILM FUND MGB 159 FILMFUND.HU

Ágnes Havas (CEO, Shooting in Hungary contact) 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) papp.csaba@filmalap.hu HNFF WORLD SALES Klaudia Androsovits (Sales manager) klaudia.androsovits@filmalap.hu Publisher: Hungarian National Film Fund (HNFF) Editors-in-chief: Dániel Deák, Gábor Osváth Executive editor: Anita Libor Project coordinator: Veronika Jakab Contributors: Dávid Dercsényi, Eszter Fazekas, Zsófi Herczeg, Bálint Kovács, Tamás Soós Art director: Aywee Kőteleky Photographer: Gábor Valuska Proofreader: Laura Brown The Hungarian Film Magazine is published by the Hungarian National Film Fund.

Published in Hungary in February 2019. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part is forbidden save with the written permission of the publishers.

Cover: Entropia, film by Flóra Anna Buda www.issuu.com/hungarianfilm www.filmfund.hu www.facebook.com/hungarian.film.fund

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