In the Theatres
The latest film of Márta Mészáros, The Last Report on Anna, fits perfectly into the oeuvre of the Kossuth Prize winning director, bringing to the screen yet another woman’s fate. Following on from her famous Diary Trilogy and her film about Imre Nagy, Márta Mészáros still seeks her protagonists in twentieth century Hungarian history. In this film we gain insight into the life of Anna Kéthly, who according to the director is little known, despite being a multifaceted and fascinating woman, and a mesmerising character.
The latest film of Márta Mészáros, The Last Report on Anna, fits perfectly into the oeuvre of the Kossuth Prize winning director, bringing to the screen yet another woman’s fate. Following on from her famous Diary Trilogy and her film about Imre Nagy, Márta Mészáros still seeks her protagonists in twentieth century Hungarian history. In this film we gain insight into the life of Anna Kéthly, who according to the director is little known, despite being a multifaceted and fascinating woman, and a mesmerising character. The Last Report, however, is not just a historical film. The film’s focal point is not Anna Kéthly’s exceptional political career. We witness the protagonists not only at significant historical moments, but also in their private lives. Thus the director has put great emphasis on human fate, on presenting the private sphere and the day-to-day life of the era. The clash of love and creed, of everyday betrayals and exceptional fidelity play a crucial part in the story. The thrill of an adventurous life-path and the gripping emotional richness of a love story are essential elements of this film.
Director: Márta Mészáros
Screenplay: Éva Pataki, Márta Mészáros
D.O.P.: Novák Emil
Writer’s Consultant: András Szekér
Consultant: Miklós Jancsó
Music: Ferenc Kovács
Editor: Zsuzsa Csákány
Sound: István Sipos
Art Director: Tamás Banovich
Costume: Katalin Jancsó
Make-up: Magdolna Márta
Stills: Miklós Gáspár
Production Manager: Krisztina Bene
Line Producer: Erika Tarr
Producer: Pál Sándor
Produced by: Hunnia Filmstudio
Cast: Enikő Eszenyi, Ernő Fekete, Adél Kováts, György Cserhalmi, Gabriella Hámori, Zsuzsa Czinkóczi, Gábor Máté, Básti Juli, Seress Zoltán, Beata Fudalej, Tibor Gáspár, Frigyes Hollósi, Jákob Ladányi
2009, Hungarian feature film, colour, 35 mm
   
In the Theatres
This film is about the despair deeply hidden in children’s soul, and about the ever increasing, ever more brutal and unintelligible destruction of ourselves and each other. We are conditioned and comfortable to think that our children are innocent, though evil also lurks in a child’s soul and as children are vulnerable and easy to manipulate they can become victims (as in certain sects and Satanism).
This film is about the despair deeply hidden in children’s soul, and about the ever increasing, ever more brutal and unintelligible destruction of ourselves and each other. We are conditioned and comfortable to think that our children are innocent, though evil also lurks in a child’s soul and as children are vulnerable and easy to manipulate they can become victims (as in certain sects and Satanism).
This is an issue of worldwide relevance. The film is based on two unconceivable and tragic events that happened in Hungary in recent years. Primarily, the film would like to present the environment in which these things happened and could happen at all, and to deliver a kind of diagnosis of our time’s confused psyche. The story is about teenagers, the odd way in which they experience life and death at the stage when both sexual and mortal desires awaken.
Director: Árpád Sopsits
Screenplay: Árpád Sopsits
D.O.P.: Márk Gyõri
Music: Róbert Debreczeni
Editor: Mari Miklós
Sound: János Csáki
Costume: János Breckl
Make-up: Gabriella Vincze
Production Designer: Péter Varga
Stills: Zoltán Németh
Production Manager: Zsolt Valkony
Producer: Pál Sándor
Production Company: Hunnia Filmstudio
Cast: Benett Vilmányi, Tamás Erőss, Anna Vicsotka, László Krikkay, Gáspár Mesés, Tekla Magyar, Gábor Gavallér, Zsolt Trill, Imre Csuja, Zsolt László, Judit Danyi, Sándor Gáspár, Eszter Szakács, Dóra Létay, Péter Mátyássy, Lajos Kovács, Feró Nagy, Loránd Banner Szücs
2008, Hungarian feature film, colour 35 mm
In the Theatres
The film’s story is based on a crime committed in Hungary: two teenage girls killed a taxi driver.
The film’s story is based on a crime committed in Hungary: two teenage girls killed a taxi driver.
Using the news coverage of the murder, the director presents the fairly typical environment of a generation for which sex and sexuality has got a connotation unfamiliar to the rest of us. The traditional roles and taboos are long forgotten, and the shyness and sensibility linked to sensuality do not exist anymore. These young people consider their body a means to an end. In the story one generation encounters another, that of the taxi drivers, traditionally existing between the world of petty criminals and that of the middle class. There are two threads of the story: one showing the character
and surroundings of the two girls, the other the milieu of the taxi drivers.
www.lanyokfilm.hu
Director: Anna Faur
Writer: Anna Faur
D.O.P.: András Gondár
Music: Márton Hegedűs
Editor: Vanda Arányi
Sound: Tamás Zányi
Re-Recording Mixer: Tamás Márkus
Art Director: Adrienn Asztalos
Costume: Fruzsina Nagy
Stills: Márton Perlaki
Production Manager: Zsolt Valkony, Eszter Gyárfás
Producer: Sándor Pál
Production Company: Hunnia Filmstudio
Cast: Fulvia Collongues, Helene Francois, Sándor Zsótér, Roland Rába, Kornél Mundruczó, Andrea Fullajtár, Bori Péterfy, Tamás Polgár
2007, Hungarian feature film, colour, 35 mm
   
Pre-Production / In Production
During World War II, following air raids on the ‘big city’, a mother brings her thirteen-year-old twin sons at their grandmother’s house in the country to save them from starvation. The old woman is a loner and an eccentric, living in a shabby hut at the edge of the forest, near the closely guarded border, where refugees are frequently seen.
During World War II, following air raids on the ‘big city’, a mother brings her thirteen-year-old twin sons at their grandmother’s house in the country to save them from starvation. The old woman is a loner and an eccentric, living in a shabby hut at the edge of the forest, near the closely guarded border, where refugees are frequently seen.
The villagers brand her a witch, because twenty years ago she supposedly poisoned her husband. The children need to work hard and adapt to the rough and callous ways of their grandmother. The boys stink to high heavens and they are forced to sleep outdoors and endure humiliation and abuse. In order to survive under these circumstances, they come up with ways to train themselves, including hurting themselves to learn to be impervious to beatings. They verbally abuse each other, to steel themselves against hurtful words. They learn to beg, lie, steal and finally to kill. In their own way they adapt to the war-ton society around them. They learn to protect themselves, verbally and physically and to develop their own set of morals. Leaving the protective shell of childhood far behind them, they become merciless young men. They make a note of every encounter, experience and observation which they hold to be ‘true’ in The Notebook. Amidst of all this pain, they learn to survive in a terrain that leaves no space for dreams. Love and compassion is only represented by the blurred memory of their mother in the city. They view the horrors of human fate, torture and death as natural. These teenagers exorcise their scruples with terrifying toughness, until they are literally ready to walk over dead bodies in order to get what they want.
Pre-Production / In Production
This film with musical numbers begins with two young men getting acquainted in 1970. At that time, one of them is Balázs Pór works as an art teacher in a primary school on the outskirts of Budapest. He wants to be a painter, and on the side he plays the guitar, Leonard Cohen-style, singing melancholy songs in English in a one-room-flat lent to him,
This film with musical numbers begins with two young men getting acquainted in 1970. At that time, one of them is Balázs Pór works as an art teacher in a primary school on the outskirts of Budapest. He wants to be a painter, and on the side he plays the guitar, Leonard Cohen-style, singing melancholy songs in English in a one-room-flat lent to him,
which the actual owner uses for secret rendezvous’ to cheat on his wife one afternoon a week. On those occasions, Balázs Pór goes out on the town, the Budapest of that era.
The other main character of the film is Géza Szeberényi, also a bit of a roaming knight living in a rented room. In his inside pocket he carries constantly the booklet of his first eight short stories. This gives him some popularity in the underground art scene of the time, where Balázs Pór has contacts as well. One night they meet in a restaurant where mutual acquaintances introduce them to each other. Szeberényi offers Balázs Pór to write song texts for him, even though he has never heard the art teacher sing. All of what fate has in store for them springs from this encounter.
Pre-Production / In Production
“Baby Vadnai” plays in two entirely different historic periods. The story starts in the forties, right before the fatal blow of the war, in the odd world of Budapest, where people live like life lasted for just a day, and it ends in the eighties.
“Baby Vadnai” plays in two entirely different historic periods. The story starts in the forties, right before the fatal blow of the war, in the odd world of Budapest, where people live like life lasted for just a day, and it ends in the eighties.Two periods, two ways of life, two basically different human motifs, behaviours, and patterns of life. Baby Vadnai is a historical film, but also an Education of Sentiments – with love and hatred alternating and coexisting. The story’s protagonists are the twenty-five-year-old woman, Baby Vadnai worshiped by the young jet sets of Pest, her fiancé, the gallant, witty and vigorous lawyer, dr. Bandi Kőszegi, and his childhood best friend, the physicist, dr. Zoltán Gémes, a dangerous kind of silent and reasoning man.
From a psychological point of view, some sequences of the film seem unrealistic, yet the story is based on real events from the memories of an old woman. Wartime love is different from that in peace, it lasts for a lifetime, it nevere ends.
Pre-Production / In Production
Moscow – 1938. Beria, the dreadful chief of the KGB is just doing his usual night time rounds when he pushes a young girl into his car. He takes her to the Kremlin and rapes her. At that night he even takes photos of her on his study desk.
Moscow – 1938. Beria, the dreadful chief of the KGB is just doing his usual night time rounds when he pushes a young girl into his car. He takes her to the Kremlin and rapes her. At that night he even takes photos of her on his study desk.Following that night, the girl is never seen again...
The story is the “snake-egg” of this film. Svetlana and the four nude pictures taken of her are in the focus of the stories happening between 1913 and 1992 in the metropolises of Europe.
Tough laws of necessity make the stories happen, each of them including in some way the 20th century history of the Continent. History that might even seem erotic from a certain aspect is just relentless and abominable.
Pre-Production / In Production
It’s the year 1990. The place is a little village in Northern Hungary, in the Bükk Mountains. One day the bishop of the diocese brings the local priest the news that the church bell of the little village will be taken away to the new church of Eger under construction. The village people try to save the bell by burying it next to their beloved who had passed away.
It’s the year 1990. The place is a little village in Northern Hungary, in the Bükk Mountains. One day the bishop of the diocese brings the local priest the news that the church bell of the little village will be taken away to the new church of Eger under construction. The village people try to save the bell by burying it next to their beloved who had passed away.This is how the story of a little community living at the far end of the world begins, and their fairy-tale like encounter with a mentally deficient little company getting just by chance to the tiny village. Fallible and lovable people with familiar, yet uncommon habits, and dreams taking them over the rainbows, with the illusionary appearance of an ostrich, and a wonderful love that grows between the benches of the church.
The mentally deficient characters in the film are not actors, but in fact mentally deficient people. The director of the film, Csaba Szekeres has already worked with them in his previous film “Dreamtour”, where: Doki, Marika, Esztike and Arpi have already appeared. In some way, this film is the continuation of “Dreamtour”.
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Márta Mészáros: The Last Report on Anna
Árpád Sopsits: The Seventh Circle