Hungarian director Gyorgy Palfi and his “Hen” are going to the Venice Production Bridge, a gap financing outlet of the Venice International Film Festival (August 30-September 9).
The producers requested funding for the German/French/Greek/Hungarian coproduction, but Eurimages rejected them. ‘Now that we have the majority of the budget in place, we’re going back to the Hungarian National Film Institute asking to fill the gap’, Palfi says. ‘If they say yes, we’ll be thankful, and it will be a movie under the Hungarian flag. But if they say no, the film will be made regardless.’
BpR: How and why did you end up going to the Venice Production Bridge?
Gyorgy Palfi: Last year we applied to Eurimages with all the requirements in place and didn’t get a penny. Under normal circumstances, a European director first takes his project to the film institute of his country, and once he gets the seed money, his producer pulls the rest of the financing from several sources in different countries, mostly in Europe. In Hungary it’s almost impossible to get your project funded by the establishment, so we had to take the slippery road trying to find the seed money somewhere in Europe.
Thanks to my Hungarian producer, Andras Muhi I got introduced to Berlin based Greek producer Thanassis Karathanos, and through his contacts at film foundations and TV networks in Germany, plus a French distributor and a Greek TV network, we got 70 percent of the budget (1,5 million Euro) covered. It took us 3 years to complete all this, and now we have been invited to the Venice Production Bridge to find a producer who’s willing to put up the rest of the funds.
BpR: What will be the language of the movie?
Gy. Palfi: It will speak Greek.
BpR: And you speak Greek, I assume.
Gy. Palfi: No, but I’ll have people who do. The actors will be Greek.
BpR: How can you direct actors in a language you don’t speak?
Gy. Palfi: I wrote the script, and the actors can’t change the dialogue too much, right? Plus, this is a movie, a visual form of art that can be subtitled… Don’t kid yourself, I know it’ll be more difficult for me to direct, but what can I do? I would have loved to shoot this film in Hungary with Hungarian actors and a Hungarian crew in Hungarian. It would have been much easier, much simpler, and I would have been ready with it in a heartbeat. Working in another country, in a language I don’t speak and with a crew I don’t know will make my job much harder.
BpR: What is the story of the “Hen”?
Gy. Palfi: This is a smart story starring a real hen. She’s a runaway from an industrial complex who ends up at a seaside restaurant that once was a successful place but now it’s been closed for the past 10 years. The owner takes in the hen and puts her in the chicken coop. The only issue is the hen wants a family and she wanders out from the henhouse to the restaurant, where she’s trying to create a home for her future folks. In the meantime, she gets to know the owner’s family, his daughter, and the daughter’s boyfriend, a smuggler of booze, cigarettes and truckloads of immigrants.
The hen finds the perfect place for a nest, the ventilator of a truck full of people. When the truckload of migrants suffocate, the old man wants out, but his daughter’s boyfriend can’t get out of the business. This brings a nasty angle of revenge to the story that works on two levels. We follow the hen, but deep down there’s a moral dilemma of people.
BpR: What happens to the hen at the end?
Gy. Palfi: I don’t want to spoil it, but I can tell you this much: now that no-one is taking her eggs, she can raise her babies and live happily ever after.
BpR: How did you come to this story?
Gy. Palfi: I was looking for a universal story that can happen anywhere in the world, because each country has its cultural heritage and national heroes, and like their European counterparts, the Hungarian classics don’t work beyond the borders.
BpR: What will these meeting entice in Venice?
Gy. Palfi: Projects come at different stages to the Venice Production Bridge, from a pitch through different stages of development. Mine is probably going to be one of convenience, since it’s a project almost ready to go, it just needs a little gap financing. Meaning, it’s a much lesser risk than coming with a clean slate. We’ll have 3 days to pitch, and then we’ll find out from the producers. Wish me good luck!
Cover credit: HVG
