22/08/2011

Fascinated by famous Hungarian writer Sándor Márai (1900-1989), the Hungarian director József Sipos will unveil his third feature adapted from one of the novelist’s works at the Montreal World Film Festival on Thursday.

After Embers in 2006 and Esther’s Inheritance in 2008, he will present Adventure (Kaland) in world premiere in the Focus on World Cinema section. Produced by PCN Film, the film stars Gerd Bockmann, Erika Marozsan, Sandor Csanyi, Mari Torocsik and Karoly Eperjes.

Co-scripted by the director, Gyorgy Somogyi and Francisco Gozon (who also acted as DoP), Adventure is set in Budapest in 1940. Professor Péter Kadar’s life seems perfect: his career is at its peak and he has married a pretty young woman.

But everything falls apart the very day he is appointed head of department at one of the city’s most reputable clinics. For his adopted son, Doctor Zoltan, is planning to have an affair with his wife. Against all expectations, Kadar negotiates a bizarre arrangement that will change the trio’s lives forever.

There is another Hungarian film in the Montreal line-up: Endre Hules’s The Maiden Danced To Death, which will screen tomorrow in international premiere in the First Films World Competition. Produced by Cinema-Film with Slovenia’s Casablanca Films and Canada, the film centres on a dancer-turned-impresario who returns to Hungary after 20 years of exile in Canada.

He finds his brother running the dance company they founded together, and his former sweetheart has become his sister-in-law. Rivalry resurfaces between the brothers who decide to relaunch their career by resuming their last successful joint production.

Starring Bea Melkvi, Laszlo Zsolt and the director, among others, the film was lensed by experienced Oscar-winning DoP Vilmos Zsigmond.

(Translated from French)