12/07/2007

Hungarian cinema will be represented at the 60th Locarno International Film Festival (August 1-11) by Benedek Fliegauf’s Milky Way, which will compete in the Filmmakers of the Present section.

The third feature by the 32 year-old Hungarian director behind the acclaimed Forest and the multiple award-winning Dealer is a “psychedelic” film about ambient music as explored by Brian Eno.

Combining a range of styles, the ambient music genre – initiated by French composer Eric Satie and brought to fame by such well-known artists as Robert Rich, Brian Lustmord and The Dead Texan – aims to incorporate various styles of and approaches to the music without enforcing any one in particular.

The real character of the film is not a person, but a planet: Earth. Or, in other words, a galaxy of humanity: the Milky Way. Through minimalist long shots the actions of the actors are depicted as if they were seen objectively from the exterior as eternal beings.

Made up of several episodes unified by the same style and atmosphere, Milky Way uses the theme of mystery as a narrative link, a mercurial mystery that goes from the banal to the divine, from the psychological to the natural and the micro-realist.

This vast array of emotions gives "an orbital point of view allowing us to see the place where we live as it really is: a planet in an infinite space. There are no towns, no countryside and no political conflicts in the film, only biosphere, timeless landscapes and these strange and mysterious beings in us – ourselves,” says Filegauf.

The film was written by Fliegauf, who also wrote the score with Raptors’ Kollektiva. Like the director’s previous films, Milky Way was produced by András Muhi for Inforg Stúdió.

The film stars the two leads of Dealer (Felícián Keresztes and Barbara Thurzó) as well as László Benedek and János Breckl.

(Translated from French)