According to Hungarian animator duo Tibor Bánóczki and Sarolta Szabó, we have only a century until the dessicated, infertile dystopia of their animated festival hit “White Plastic Sky” becomes our reality. A few years ago, this grave and wistful film’s 2123 setting would have seemed hyperbolic, but the rapidity with which we seem to be hurtling toward environmental collapse recently makes its parched landscapes — it could be the surface of Mars but for the rusted hulls of ships jutting up like tombstones from arid lakebeds — seem only a mild exaggeration of the wastelands our literal grandchildren might have to call home.
Mirroring an animation style in which the somnolent characters are less expressive than the richly detailed, vanishing-point backgrounds however, it is harder to believe in Bánóczki and Szabó’s vision of transformation undergone in the human psyche in an equivalent time frame. In this 2123, life can only be supported...
Mirroring an animation style in which the somnolent characters are less expressive than the richly detailed, vanishing-point backgrounds however, it is harder to believe in Bánóczki and Szabó’s vision of transformation undergone in the human psyche in an equivalent time frame. In this 2123, life can only be supported...
- 8/23/2023
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
Impressively bleak animated Hungarian sci-fi feature White Plastic Sky imagines a grim dystopia a hundred years from now where, like in Soylent Green (1973), older people are harvested at age 50, turned into trees so that they can become food for the younger generation. Except in this movie, the high-tech cannibalism is no state secret waiting to be blurted out by Charlton Heston, but a fact of life universally accepted phlegmatically by all. It only becomes a problem for protagonist Stefan (Tamas Keresztes) when his wife Nora (Zsofia Szamosi) decides to undergo the “implantation” procedure at age 32, having lost the will to live since the death of their child.
Made using a striking blend of rotoscope-traced live actors and intricate CG-drawn background designs to build a richly detailed world, this could build a cult following off a warm reception in Berlin.
Rotoscoping is a technique that dates back to the earliest days...
Made using a striking blend of rotoscope-traced live actors and intricate CG-drawn background designs to build a richly detailed world, this could build a cult following off a warm reception in Berlin.
Rotoscoping is a technique that dates back to the earliest days...
- 2/28/2023
- by Leslie Felperin
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
The first few minutes of White Plastic Sky, the animated feature from Hungarian directors Tibor Bánóczki and Sarolta Szabó that debuted at the Berlin Film Festival 2023, sketch a future world with echoes of past cinematic dystopias.
The world has been stripped of life, the soil poisoned, and all animals driven to extinction. Humanity survives under a huge geodesic dome (the plastic sky of the title) and has learned to feed on itself. At the age of 50, every citizen gets a special implant that turns them into a food source for the next generation. In a scene resembling the pod farms of the Matrix films, we see how implanted humans are transmogrified into a hybrid plant species, becoming trees that provide oxygen and food for those under the dome.
“There are similarities in our story to Soylent Green or Logan’s Run, similar motifs to other high-concept, or hardcore science fiction,” admits Bánóczki,...
The world has been stripped of life, the soil poisoned, and all animals driven to extinction. Humanity survives under a huge geodesic dome (the plastic sky of the title) and has learned to feed on itself. At the age of 50, every citizen gets a special implant that turns them into a food source for the next generation. In a scene resembling the pod farms of the Matrix films, we see how implanted humans are transmogrified into a hybrid plant species, becoming trees that provide oxygen and food for those under the dome.
“There are similarities in our story to Soylent Green or Logan’s Run, similar motifs to other high-concept, or hardcore science fiction,” admits Bánóczki,...
- 2/17/2023
- by Scott Roxborough
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Hungarian helmer Kristóf Deák, who won an Oscar for best live-action short film for “Sing,” has made his first feature-length movie, the Communist-era drama “Captives.”
Based on real events, the picture is set in Budapest, Hungary, during the Communist era, in 1951. It turns on the story of a family and the secret police who show up at their door, move in, and lock the family members up in their own home, along with anyone else who comes knocking. Days go by without any explanation and the situation grows more and more absurd as secrets, lies and paranoia begin to unravel the growing number of captives in the apartment.
The movie was predominantly shot in a single location in Budapest. It premiered in competition at the International Film Festival of India, which was held last month in Goa.
Deák has worked in short films and TV, directing episodes of popular Hungarian series “Hacktion.
Based on real events, the picture is set in Budapest, Hungary, during the Communist era, in 1951. It turns on the story of a family and the secret police who show up at their door, move in, and lock the family members up in their own home, along with anyone else who comes knocking. Days go by without any explanation and the situation grows more and more absurd as secrets, lies and paranoia begin to unravel the growing number of captives in the apartment.
The movie was predominantly shot in a single location in Budapest. It premiered in competition at the International Film Festival of India, which was held last month in Goa.
Deák has worked in short films and TV, directing episodes of popular Hungarian series “Hacktion.
- 12/10/2019
- by Stewart Clarke
- Variety Film + TV
The 24th Sarajevo Film Festival has awarded its top prize to Bulgarian director Milko Lazarov’s “Ága.” The Yakut-language movie, which saw its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival in February, tells the story of a troubled Inuit family.
“Ága” won the Heart of Sarajevo on Thursday night, the festival’s prize for best feature film, which includes a €16,000 award. The movie, a co-production between Bulgaria, Germany and France, was co-written by Lazarov and Simeon Ventsislavov.
“Ága” centers on an isolated Inuit couple who hold on to their traditions while global warming and the modern world encroach. When the wife’s health deteriorates, the husband decides to fulfill her last wish by embarking on a long journey to find their daughter, Ága, who deserted the couple long ago. Variety’s Jay Weissberg called the film a “handsome paean to a dying culture.”
For the second year running, the festival...
“Ága” won the Heart of Sarajevo on Thursday night, the festival’s prize for best feature film, which includes a €16,000 award. The movie, a co-production between Bulgaria, Germany and France, was co-written by Lazarov and Simeon Ventsislavov.
“Ága” centers on an isolated Inuit couple who hold on to their traditions while global warming and the modern world encroach. When the wife’s health deteriorates, the husband decides to fulfill her last wish by embarking on a long journey to find their daughter, Ága, who deserted the couple long ago. Variety’s Jay Weissberg called the film a “handsome paean to a dying culture.”
For the second year running, the festival...
- 8/17/2018
- by Robert Mitchell
- Variety Film + TV
Film premiered in Cannes Critics’ Week.
Berlin-based sales agent Films Boutique is reporting initial business on its Hungarian drama One Day, which premiered at Cannes in Critics’ Week and plays this week in Sarajevo Film Festival’s Feature Competition.
The film has sold to Benelux (September Film), Ex-Yugoslavia (Obala Art Center), Brazil (Zeta Filmes), China (Hugoeast), and Poland (Aurora).
Directed by Zsófia Szilágyi, her feature debut, One Day spans 36 hours in the life of a working mother of three, played by Zsófia Szamosi, who struggles handling domestic and professional obligations, while she suspects her husband might be cheating on her with a friend.
Berlin-based sales agent Films Boutique is reporting initial business on its Hungarian drama One Day, which premiered at Cannes in Critics’ Week and plays this week in Sarajevo Film Festival’s Feature Competition.
The film has sold to Benelux (September Film), Ex-Yugoslavia (Obala Art Center), Brazil (Zeta Filmes), China (Hugoeast), and Poland (Aurora).
Directed by Zsófia Szilágyi, her feature debut, One Day spans 36 hours in the life of a working mother of three, played by Zsófia Szamosi, who struggles handling domestic and professional obligations, while she suspects her husband might be cheating on her with a friend.
- 8/15/2018
- by Tom Grater
- ScreenDaily
Modest drama “One Day” shows 36 hours in a disintegrating marriage from the point of view of the wife — a middle-class mother of three — who is already maximally stressed by the petty problems of her daily routine. It’s a confidently and naturalistically helmed feature debut by Zsófia Szilágyi (a former student of and assistant to Academy Award nominee Ildiko Enyedi) delivered in a precisely detailed, unhurried, hyper-real way. The film nabbed the Fipresci award from the international film critics for best first or second feature at the Cannes Film Festival. The prize should raise the profile of this intense, intimate work among festival programmers and European buyers, and marks the director as a talent to watch.
The central character, thirtysomething Anna (Zsófia Szamosi) is always forced into short-term problem-solving mode, and is so constantly on the go that she never has time to think about the big picture, let alone...
The central character, thirtysomething Anna (Zsófia Szamosi) is always forced into short-term problem-solving mode, and is so constantly on the go that she never has time to think about the big picture, let alone...
- 5/22/2018
- by Alissa Simon
- Variety Film + TV
Hungarian cinema has announced itself as a force over the last few years, receiving international acclaim for such finely crafted Holocaust dramas as “Son of Saul” (2015) and “1945” (2017), as well as the Oscar-nominated contemporary romance, “On Body and Soul” (2017), which won the Golden Bear at the Berlinale last year. That film’s director, Ildikó Enyedi, is experiencing a mid-career renaissance after an 18-year gap in her filmmaking. In that time, she was teaching the next generation of Hungarian filmmakers, which includes Zsófia Szilágyi, who is set to make her Cannes Film Festival debut this year with “One Day.”
Set during a single day in the life of a mother of three, “One Day” (“Egy Nap”) takes its rhythm from the mundanity of everyday life. Per the official synopsis: “Anna (Zsófia Szamosi) is constantly running around – from work to the nursery, to school, to ballet, to fencing class. As if this wasn’t enough,...
Set during a single day in the life of a mother of three, “One Day” (“Egy Nap”) takes its rhythm from the mundanity of everyday life. Per the official synopsis: “Anna (Zsófia Szamosi) is constantly running around – from work to the nursery, to school, to ballet, to fencing class. As if this wasn’t enough,...
- 4/27/2018
- by Jude Dry
- Indiewire
MaryAnn’s quick take… My favorite of the nominees is “Sing” [pictured], a movie for right-now with its pushback against a bullying authority figure and its gently effective defiance. I’m “biast” (pro): nothing
I’m “biast” (con): nothing
(what is this about? see my critic’s minifesto)
Moral dilemmas, standing up for friends old and new, navigating loneliness, and defying The Man and the systems that box us in: these are the motifs that wend their way through the five short live-action films nominated for the Oscar this year, to varying degrees of success.
My favorite of the bunch and the one I’d love to see win the Academy Award is the hugely engaging “Sing (Mindenki)” [IMDb|official site], from Hungarian filmmaker Kristóf Deák. Zsófi (Dóra Gáspárvalvi), around 10 years old, thinks she has found a place to belong in her new Budapest primary school, in its choir that sings so beautifully…...
I’m “biast” (con): nothing
(what is this about? see my critic’s minifesto)
Moral dilemmas, standing up for friends old and new, navigating loneliness, and defying The Man and the systems that box us in: these are the motifs that wend their way through the five short live-action films nominated for the Oscar this year, to varying degrees of success.
My favorite of the bunch and the one I’d love to see win the Academy Award is the hugely engaging “Sing (Mindenki)” [IMDb|official site], from Hungarian filmmaker Kristóf Deák. Zsófi (Dóra Gáspárvalvi), around 10 years old, thinks she has found a place to belong in her new Budapest primary school, in its choir that sings so beautifully…...
- 2/23/2017
- by MaryAnn Johanson
- www.flickfilosopher.com
Ahead of the Academy Awards, we’re reviewing each short category. See the Live-Action section below and the other shorts sections here.
Ennemis intérieurs – France – 28 minutes
The definitive exchange in Hidden Figures—the one that defines America then and still today—is when Kirsten Dunst’s personnel manager tells Octavia Spencer’s yet-to-be-given-the-title supervisor, “Despite what you may think, I have nothing against y’all.” Spencer’s Dorothy Vaughan counters without missing a beat, “I know you probably believe that.” It’s such a perfect distillation of how racism permeates the very core of who we are to the point where we don’t even understand why we are racist. It happens all the time now, white people accusing black people of screaming racism as a knee-jerk reaction because they believe their racist actions are normal. Their fear has made it so other colors are inferior, dangerous, and untrustworthy. In...
Ennemis intérieurs – France – 28 minutes
The definitive exchange in Hidden Figures—the one that defines America then and still today—is when Kirsten Dunst’s personnel manager tells Octavia Spencer’s yet-to-be-given-the-title supervisor, “Despite what you may think, I have nothing against y’all.” Spencer’s Dorothy Vaughan counters without missing a beat, “I know you probably believe that.” It’s such a perfect distillation of how racism permeates the very core of who we are to the point where we don’t even understand why we are racist. It happens all the time now, white people accusing black people of screaming racism as a knee-jerk reaction because they believe their racist actions are normal. Their fear has made it so other colors are inferior, dangerous, and untrustworthy. In...
- 2/8/2017
- by Jared Mobarak
- The Film Stage
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