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At the first-ever Eurocine Expo in Budapest, Budapest Reporter’s Andi Lustak sat down with Viktória Sovák of the NFI Film Lab for a conversation that opens the door to one of the most fascinating corners of the Hungarian film industry: the place where analog craft, digital innovation and long-term cinematic preservation meet.
When analog becomes a future-facing choice
Eurocine brought producers, cinematographers, studios and film professionals together at Hungexpo — and for the NFI Film Lab, the timing could hardly have been better.
As Sovák explains in the interview, the Lab’s presence at the event was not only about visibility. It was about showing how closely studio production and post-production now work together. The same international and Hungarian productions that shoot on stages often arrive at the Film Lab later, where their images are processed, finished, restored or preserved.
The conversation quickly moves to one of the most exciting shifts in contemporary cinema: the return of analog film.
In an industry dominated by digital workflows, film stock has quietly become desirable again. Not because it is easy. Not because it is cheap. But because it gives filmmakers something they still cannot fully recreate digitally.
For many directors and cinematographers, analog is not nostalgia. It is an aesthetic choice — and, increasingly, a preservation strategy.
Sovák points out that film stock also solves a problem many digital productions only face years later: long-term survival. Digital files must constantly be migrated, updated and protected from format decay. Analog film, by contrast, has already proven its durability across generations.
The disappearing craft behind the image
The NFI Film Lab does not simply operate modern software. It also works with machines that are decades old — equipment that is no longer manufactured, but still essential for photochemical film processing. That means the real challenge is not only maintaining the machines. It is keeping alive the knowledge of how to use them.
Sovák describes this as one of the Lab’s most difficult missions: passing on a craft that was traditionally learned on-site, step by step, through experience.
That is where the educational dimension of the story becomes especially important. The next generation may be curious about film, but the professional path is narrow. There are only a handful of film labs left in Europe, and very few people can be promised a forty-year career in this field.
Yet this is exactly why the work matters.
Sovák also mentions the newly formed Photochemical Film Collective, an international network of analog film labs created to help the remaining labs support one another with knowledge, spare parts and practical solutions. According to the interview, only 34 analog film labs remain worldwide — a number that makes the NFI Film Lab’s role in Budapest feel even more significant.
Between old machines and new ideas
On the digital side, Sovák says the challenge is constant development: new tools, new investments, new technical expectations. On the analog side, innovation looks different. The technology itself has already reached a mature form, but new combinations are still possible.
One of the most memorable comparisons in the conversation comes from the Lab’s own way of thinking: analog technology is a little like gastronomy. We may already know all the spices, but that does not mean every possible combination has been tried.
This is where analog and digital can meet in exciting ways. Sovák talks about productions that combine analog shooting, digital finishing and even laser recording the final cut back onto negative. In that sense, the Film Lab is not choosing between the old and the new. It is creating a space where both can strengthen each other.
The interview also gives a glimpse into the Lab’s busy production pipeline. Sovák speaks about a particularly intense start to the year, with multiple feature films arriving for analog work, including the new film by István Szabó, as well as foreign productions whose negatives travelled long distances to be developed in Budapest.
And then there is one unexpected detail that perfectly captures the hidden scale of the Lab’s work: when there are no new features in the pipeline, the analog capacity remains active through archival work and filmstrip production. The Lab produces around 200,000 meters of filmstrip per year — roughly 300,000 individual filmstrips.
To hear Viktória Sovák explain how the NFI Film Lab keeps analog film alive while working at the front edge of modern post-production, watch the full Budapest Reporter interview with Andi Lustak below:
