Filmmakers Fight Back Against Deepening Chill in Viktor Orban’s Hungary: ‘People Have Nothing to Lose’
variety.comChristopher Vourlias On the surface, it looks like any other teenage love story: Abel, an absent-minded high-school student in Budapest, hopelessly pines for his best friend, Erika, dreamily staring out the classroom window when the teacher calls his name.
On the day of his final exam, he draws a blank: Rather than bury his head in his history books, Abel’s had his head in the clouds.
But an off-hand comment by one of his examiners, about the tricolor ribbon pinned to his lapel — a nationalist symbol in Viktor Orbán’s Hungary — sparks a controversy that soon snowballs into a nationwide scandal.
For Hungarian filmmaker Gábor Reisz, the director of “Explanation for Everything,” the debate cuts to the heart of a question that has increasingly dominated public discourse in his country since the rise of the right-wing prime minister: “Are you a real Hungarian?” The film, which premieres in the Horizons strand of the Venice Film Festival, is something of an outlier for the Hungarian industry in recent years.
Read more on variety.com
