Hungarian World Premiere in Cannes

This morning the list of the feature films invited to the official selection of the 63rd Cannes Film Festival was announced in Paris. The selection committee had 4000 new films from all over the world to choose from. Ágnes Kocsis’s latest film has been invited into the official selection.



Adrienn Pál, Ágnes Kocsis’s second feature film, a Hungarian-Dutch-Austrian-French coproduction, will be presented as part of the Un Certain Regard programme at the 63rd edition of the most important film fest of the world taking place on the French Riviera each May.
Kontroll, by Nimród Antal, Johanna by Kornél Mundruczó and Taxidermia by György Pálfi have had their premiere in the same programme recently.

Adrienn Pál is about "an alienated nurse whose life is surrounded by death. She sets off to find her long-lost childhood friend. While tracing her recollections, she embarks on a paradox-filled voyage within her own memory and the memory of those she encounters. Her searches do not take her where she wanted to go, still her life will never be the same as a result. Adrienn Pál is a film about the relativity of memory, the uncertainty of the past, and above all our self-discovery."

Adrienn Pál was produced by Budapest based KMH Film headed by Ferenc Pusztai, Isabella Films (NL), Freibauter Film (AT), Cinema Defacto (F), Attila Árpa (H) and Oblomova Film (H). The screenplay was written by the director together with Andrea Roberti, the director of photography was Ádám Fillenz and the star of the film is Éva Gábor, an amateur actress. The film was made with the support of the Motion Picture Public Foundation of Hungary, the National Cultural Fund, Rézangyal, Buszesz Zrt. and Lidl Hungary.

Ágnes Kocsis (Budapest, 1971) graduated from ELTE University Budapest, where she studied Polish language and literature, esthetics and film theory. In 2003 she spent two semesters at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome, Italy, where she studied directing and screenplay writing. In 2005 she got a degree from the University of Theatre, Film and Television, Budapest where she attended Ferenc Grunwalsky’s class. She published original works and translations of film related topics in various journals.
After short films, which were very well received, in 2006 she made Fresh Air (Friss levegő), her diploma film as a director, which won the Sándor Simó Prize for the best first film at the Hungarian Film Week and was also screened for the international public in Cannes at the Critics’ Week. In the same year her short film Virus (A vírus) was also invited to Cannes to the Cinéfondation, where it was awarded the 3rd prize of the jury presided by Tim Burton.

Fresh Air has been presented at the most important film festivals of the world. In Warsaw it won the prize of FIPRESCI, the international organisation of film critics. In 2006 it was nominated for the European Discovery Award for the best first feature by the European Film Academy. The unbroken success the film has enjoyed substantiate the expectations of both the audience and the profession, which Adrienn Pál seems to be fulfilling.

Ágnes Kocsis's both feature films were produced by Ferenc Pusztai (KMH Film), who won the best producer prize at the 41st Hungarian Film Week for the feature films Czukor Show and Team Building in February.

Source: Filmunio