New films in 2008. Vol. 3.

Will they come to an end? We present the third part of our compilation including Hungarian films made in 2008.

We also selected two movies (Tüskevár and Colorado Kid), which will soon be shown in spite of all the difficulties the creators had to face during shooting.

Krisztián Károly Köves: Werk

Krisztián Károly Köves’ his first feature entitled Werk is in the pre-production phase. If everything goes well, shooting may start this September. Werk implements a dramaturgical approach mainly characteristic of American horror-thrillers, but according to the director without the clichés. The film, inspired by the story of Faust, is about a young actress who is preparing for her first stage appearance. She descends into a dark cellar system where a friend helps her to be more authentic on stage. Instead of expressing a direct message, the director aims at making the audience ask the question: what would she do for her arts, and through that for immortality?



Cast: Casting has not been finished yet
Production company: Filmpartners
Production cost: 60 million HUF
Expected release date: Film Week 2009
IMDb *not credited


Zsolt Pozsgai:  A föld szeretője

Zsolt Pozsgai director of Csendkút and Szabadságharc Szebenben, is making a historical movie again. He intends to present his film based on Vilmos Zsolnay’ s life in 2010, when the city of Pécs is to become the cultural capital of Europe. The film will prove that besides the renowned Hungarian band Kispál és a Borz, other significant people were born and lived in and around Pécs. A föld szeretője embeds Zsolnay’s life, who had never really left Pécs, in legendary and contradictory stories. Pozsgai, who wrote the script, too, added that the script was based on Zsófia Dénes’ novel The marvellous potter (A csodálatos fazekas), which in order to unravel the mystical contradictions handles Zsolnay’s biography in an unusual way. The colours of the sets and costumes recalling the works of Zsolnay place the story beyond reality, providing enough space for the storyline taking place in Pécs.

Cast: Áron Őze, Krisztina Tarsoly, Gábor Koncz, László Görög, Szilvia Sunyovszky, György Kézdy, Éva Aux
Production company: Pécs 2010 Kht., Pécs TV Kft.
Production cost: 320 million HUF
Expected release date: 2010
IMDb  *not credited

Tamás Dömötör:  Czukor Show

In 1906 Milán Füst read a tragic story in the papers: a young woman, who had been the lover of a married man, committed suicide. Inspired by this report, Füst wrote his novel The Unhappy Ones (1914). Tamás Dömötör, who graduated film directing at the Hungarian Academy of Drama and Film and is also known as the host of Hungarian TV channel Paprika TV, is about to make the modern version of the story originally taking place at the beginning of the last century. Dömötör, however, places the tragic story in the studio of a talk show. A couple of years ago after one of the guests of a talk show had given a detailed account of how he killed his son, the host wished a nice afternoon to everybody. The programme and the presentation of the story inspired Tamás Dömötör two years ago to write the story of the guest of the talk show, who commits suicide.

Cast: Balázs Czukor, Zsolt Anger, Emese Vasvári, Mihály Szabados, Szilvia Csonka, Kata Péter, Sándor Simicz
Production company: Dropout Film Kft.
Production cost: 36 million HUF
Expected release date: not known for the time being
IMDb

Ágnes Kocsis: Adrienn Pál

The female lead of Ágnes Kocsis’ new film Adrienn Pál was finally found. The rather stout nurse becomes more and more insensitive to the illnesses and death around her. She goes on a journey to find her childhood friend. During the journey she tries to collect her memories, and she also goes on a journey in the memories of all those people with whom she meets. This metaphorical journey symbolises our memories, the uncertainties of our memory and the past, and the quest for our personality.


Cast: casting has not been finished yet
Production company: Print KMH Kft.
Production cost: 1,5 million EURO (350 million HUF)
Expected release date: May 2009.
IMDb *not credited


János Edelényi: Prima Primavera

The film is a kind of road movie, in which the almost sixty year old director tells the story of  an old man who has a soul of a child and a much younger gipsy girl in his first feature film. The starting point is a bank robbery, during which the main character Gábor’s mother dies. The “mentally slightly retarded elderly adolescent” together with Joli the innocent victim of the robbery are heading towards an imaginary village called Kiskikinda in Serbia.



Cast: Andor Lukáts, Vesela Kazakova, Antonie Kamerling, Enikő Börcsök,  Erzsi Máthé, Djoko Rosic, Schubert Éva
Production company: Eurofilm Stúdió, Vita Nova Films, Geopoly, Riba Film International
Production cost: 250 million HUF
Expected release date: Film Week 2009
IMDb

Balogh György: Tüskevár

After Pizzaman, György Balogh’s latest feature film has not been finished yet after so many years. Shooting must have been suspended several times because of lack of money. In spite of all this the remake will be sooner or later shown at the Hungarian cinemas.

Cast: Marcell Nagy, Bálint Péntek, Lajos Kovács
Production company: Fényfilm Kft.
Production cost: no data available
Expected release date: not known
IMDb


András Vágvölgyi: Colorado Kid

Once filming of András Vágvölgyi B.’s film began in the summer of 2006, many difficulties and problems occurred. The film was meant to recall the revolution of 1956 and the genre of film noir, which was very popular in the 1950s in the west, whilst in Hungary it was not known at all. The story is based on the prison report, written with a good sense of style, which was found by the expert of the 1956 revolution László Eörsi historian. In the meanwhile the spectrum of the story became wider, it was no more linked strictly with the revolution but contained some events of 1960, too. Vágvölgyi presents the collective compromise of the Kádár-era, or as he calls it the cumulative betraying-course, which breaks with the usual point of view of showing the revolution and rather concentrates on the horizon of ordinary people. We must wait for the meeting of Tarantino and István Eörsi until the next Film Week: most of the scenes are finished, but there are some more sequences to be filmed in September-October. There are also other phases of production to be completed e.g. composing music with János Másik, and the creators keep on trying to get support from potential investors.

Cast: Zsolt Nagy, Lilla Sárosdi, Tibor Gáspár, Károly Hajduk
Production company: CameoFilm
Production cost: 300 million HUF
Expected release date: Film Week 2009
IMDb