Leading Hungarian director Lili Horvát says she struggled to secure local funding for her first English-language feature, My Notes On Mars, starring Mackenzie Davis and Rupert Friend.
Horvát is screening some footage from the film in a closed session at Slano Film Days in Croatia this weekend.
Her credits include 2020’s Preparations To Be Together For An Unknown Period Of Time, which is also showing in Slano.
Horvát believed that after the success of this film, which premiered in Venice and received multiple awards, it would be relatively straightforward to access financing from National Film Institute Hungary (NFI) for her next project.
“I couldn’t have been more wrong,” she says now.
The film did eventually receive NFI backing but only late on in the process. “I only got the chance to make this movie because the project attracted such names, producers and actors, that it couldn’t be ignored. But we were not treated as friends.”
New Hungarian culture minister Zoltán Tarr has promised a new era of “transparency” in the Hungarian film industry following the end of Viktor Orban’s 16 years as prime minister
“This is an incredibly hopeful time in Hungary. I am happy to be experiencing it,” Horvát says.
Nonetheless, she believes those in charge of rebuilding the national film funding system now face a daunting task.
“There are a lot of people who have been waiting for years for support, and from all different generations,” she says. “It will surely be a very complex and difficult task to rebuild this system so that filmmakers, based on their talent and previous work, can do what they deserve to do.”
My Notes On Mars has been widely pre-sold by Paradise City Sales and UTA Independent Film Group. Horvat produced it herself alongside Dóra Csernátony through their company, Poste Restante.
The film is a romantic drama with sci-fi elements about a brilliant scientist who disappears while on a hiking trip with her husband. When she reappears several weeks later, she has changed in some undefinable way.
“The financing aspect of making this movie was sometimes excruciating but the creative challenges were joyful ones,” she says/ “ Luckily we got funding from Austria, also from Bosnia and we had Paradise City as sales agent very early on.
“Mackenzie Davis and Rupert Friend are giving super-strong performances in this movie. I was given so much by them. I think they decided to trust me , not only my writing but me and my team, and they gave themselves really deeply to this project.”
Further financing came from Montenegro, ZDF, ARTE and TRT.
One of the other producers on the film is Slano Film Days founder and ex Sarajevo Festival head, Mirsaud ‘Miro’ Purivatra . Horvát is a long-time supporter of his Slano initiative to give emerging filmmakers from the Balkan region a chance to spend time with and learn from established talents such as Horvát.
“I love that this is a small, intimate film event where you can get caught up in surprisingly deep and meaningful conversations,” Horvát revals. “I have known Miro for almost 20 years. He and his team possess a very special skill, they truly give their guests their full loving attention whether they are aspiring filmmakers or near-legendary figures. I really felt the same love and respect when my thesis film was screened in Sarajevo in the short film programme as I did when I was a member of the feature film jury. I feel that once they have placed their trust in you, they will believe in you forever.”
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