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Hungarian Edition
Kornél Mundruczó returned to the Venice International Film Festival on Wednesday as Place to Be received its world premiere in the Venice Open – Out of Competition programme. Led by Ellen Burstyn and Taika Waititi, the film turns an unlikely journey involving a lost racing pigeon into a restrained story about grief, companionship and the possibility of beginning again later in life.
Burstyn plays Brooke Graham, a gentle widow who has devoted herself to her children since the death of her husband. When a stubborn racing pigeon unexpectedly enters her life and refuses to leave, Brooke decides to return the bird – named Intruder – to its owner.
The search takes her from Chicago to New York, where she meets Nelson Green, a businessman trying to rebuild his own life after a series of setbacks. What begins as an eccentric mission gradually becomes a meeting between two people who have both lost their sense of direction.
Their connection is neither a conventional romance nor a simple odd-couple comedy. Instead, the film explores the intimacy that can emerge through friendship, shared vulnerability and the temporary interruption of an otherwise solitary life.
A deliberate change of tone
The new film marks a conscious shift in register for Mundruczó, whose recent work has frequently confronted trauma, loss and family rupture with considerable emotional force.
“After years making films about catastrophe, I wanted to tell a quieter story: a love story about an older woman,”
the director explains in his official Venice statement.
That quieter approach does not mean abandoning the themes that have long interested Mundruczó and screenwriter Kata Wéber. Place to Be still begins with bereavement and emotional dislocation, but its dramatic movement is directed towards connection rather than collapse.
The pigeon lends the premise a touch of absurdity, yet it also gives Brooke a concrete reason to step beyond the safety of her established routine. Mundruczó and Wéber use that modest act of responsibility to open a broader story about ageing, independence and the need to remain emotionally available to the unexpected.
Brooke initially sets out to rescue a lost bird, while the journey gradually raises the question of who – or what – is really being saved.
Ellen Burstyn and Taika Waititi find common ground
Burstyn’s appearance in Place to Be follows another important moment at this year’s festival. Two days before the premiere, Venice presented the 93-year-old actor with its Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement, recognising a screen career spanning more than six decades.
The honour puts Place to Be at the centre of an especially significant Venice appearance for Burstyn: not merely as a retrospective celebration of her work, but as evidence that she continues to take on substantial leading roles.
Burstyn has described the film as “a sexless love story”, an economical phrase that captures the unusual relationship at its centre. Brooke and Nelson become emotionally intimate without their connection being forced into a familiar romantic structure.
That bond appears to have extended beyond the screen. In an interview published ahead of the premiere, Burstyn and Waititi spoke about the genuine friendship that developed between them during production, as well as the disciplined rehearsal process behind their partnership.
The role also places Waititi within a more subdued dramatic framework than the comic mode for which many audiences know him. Pamela Anderson, Murray Bartlett and David Wenham complete the principal ensemble.
An Australian production with a Hungarian creative spine
Although its story travels between two American cities, Place to Be was filmed in Sydney. Production began at Disney Studios Australia with support from Screen NSW’s Made in NSW programme, placing the film within the growing body of international projects using Australia’s studio infrastructure and local crews.
The official Venice listing identifies it as an Australian production, while its producing and financing structure brings together companies and partners from several countries. The Hungarian connection is therefore found primarily within the creative team rather than the shooting location.
Wéber wrote the screenplay, continuing one of contemporary Hungarian cinema’s most internationally visible director-writer partnerships. Dávid Jancsó and Ilka Janka Nagy are among the film’s editors, while Péter Zombola composed the score. Australian cinematographer Germain McMicking was responsible for the film’s visual language, underlining the genuinely international character of the production.
As Budapest Reporter noted in its earlier overview of Hungary’s presence at this year’s festival, Place to Be represents a form of Hungarian participation that no longer depends on national production boundaries. Its creative identity emerges through recurring collaborators working within a wider international framework.
Following Wednesday’s world premiere, Place to Be will screen again in Venice on Thursday morning. A wider release date has not yet been announced.
For Mundruczó, the film’s Venice arrival is less a retreat from intensity than a change of scale. Catastrophe gives way to chance, and a lost pigeon becomes the unlikely reason two people begin moving forward again.
