San Francisco Frontiers - Berlinale: Film director Mundruczo left Hungary due to lack of funding

"I never planned to make American movies," Mundruczo told journalists at the Berlin International Film Festival after presenting his latest film, "At the Sea".

The director was responding to a question about the difficulty of filming in Hungary under Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has been in power since 2010 and faces elections in April.

"I was a Hungarian film maker" making art-house cinema and "I was rather successful" in Europe, Mundruczo said.

The 50-year-old director said he sought funding to make his 2020 film "Pieces of a Woman" in Hungarian but was rejected.

American producer Kevin Turan, who died in 2023, then offered to produce it in English for streaming giant Netflix.

"Of course I'm privileged, I'm happy, I'm grateful," Mundruczo said.

But "I'm still doing American movies because I'm not able to do Hungarian movies, which is kind of crazy," he added.

"At the Sea", which is in competition at the festival, tells the story of Laura (Amy Adams), an alcoholic fresh out of rehab, who spends a summer at the seaside trying to reconnect with her family and find meaning in life.

The film's producer, Ukrainian Alexander Rodnyansky, said even making the film in the US proved a challenge, as "it's incredibly hard to do an independent drama in the US these days".

Investors follow every stage of filming to ensure box-office success, Rodnyansky said, and it is "complicated to raise money and to win the trust of the investors and find a way to make the movie (...) even with such a cast".

The producer, who spent most of his career in Russia, was sentenced to eight and a half years in prison there in 2024 for spreading "false" information about the Russian military.

O.Anderson--SFF