EXCLUSIVE: Oliver Rudolf’s My Mother, The Monster has won the inaugural Cine-Collegium Budapest (CCB) financing award, from Hungary’s new Budapest International Film Festival.
The €63,000 prize was awarded by a five-person jury, headed by Hungarian film stalwart Ildiko Enyedi. The winner was selected from 16 eligible proposals.
Written by Zsigmond Kungl, My Mother, The Monster follows Eva, a woman in her forties whose frustrations at becoming an ‘invisible woman’ are accumulating. It is only when Eva starts to wear a mask that she begins to be seen.
Genoveva Petrovits produces the film, with French co-producer Florent Coulon, currently representing the project in Cannes.
The project will also receive in-kind offers from the local Hungarian industry, including props, studio days and post-production services.
With a €250,000 budget, it has already received support from the Nouvelle Aquitaine region in France; and has development pedigree from Jerusalem’s Sam Spiegel International Film Lab, and from winning the Eurimages prize at Sarajevo’s CineLink Industry Days in 2023.
The CCB was established last year as an independent fund, distinct from the film funding of the Hungarian government, on the back of Hungarian independent titles including Gabor Reisz’s Venice Horizons 2023 winner Explanation For Everything.
“We talked a lot - not only about the film projects, but also about the impossible situation in which our industry is now in Hungary, where fresh talents, full of drive and free imagination, enter,” said Enyedi. “What a rough reception they get.
“In this situation, instead of complaining, CCB is a powerful sign, an exclamation mark aiming to strengthen our filmmaking community, it demonstrates the indignity of the situation and supports the creation of a single very low-budget film. We congratulate the winner and think with much love and concern about the other applicants, our talented young colleagues - seriously, our hearts are breaking.”
The festival organisers say that the CCB fund “is not the ideal solution for the financing and long-term sustainability of Hungarian cinema, but a necessary constraint and an escape route in the current situation.”
“It has been proven that filmmaking in Hungary is not just a business or a profession, but also a vocation and a community with great potential, and that such a significant mutual goal is able to - instead of dividing - unite the industry participants in a country where democracy and its institutions have been gradually dismantled,” said the festival statement.
The inaugural Budapest International Film Festival was held from October 29-November 3.
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