Amid Rightward Turn Under Viktor Orbán, Hungarian Filmmakers Look to a ‘Heroic Past’
variety.comChristopher Vourlias On the outskirts of Budapest, a big-budget period drama is recreating the fateful day that sparked the Hungarian war of independence in 1848.
Construction is underway at the state-owned Mafilm studio complex on a massive set that will stand in for the Hungarian capital in the 19th century.
With 100-plus shooting days planned through September, director Balázs Lóth describes “Now or Never!” as “the most ambitious Hungarian film ever made.”That ambition is being matched by Hungary’s National Film Institute, which awarded “Now or Never!” a $12.5 million production grant — the largest amount given to a feature film since the fall of communism in 1989.It’s the second big swing on a splashy historical drama taken by the NFI in the past year, after it awarded $29 million to “Rise of the Raven,” an epic drama series produced by Robert Lantos’ Serendipity Point Films (“Crimes of the Future”) and Beta Film (“Gomorrah”) that tells the story of the Hungarian warrior Janos Hunyadi, who led the defeat of the Ottoman army in 1456 — an event that Lantos says “changed the history of all Europe.” Both are lavish productions that are determined to raise the bar for a local screen industry that is reaching all-time heights.
Total production spend in Hungary reached a record $650 million last year, an amount that was nearly 30% higher than in the pre-pandemic year of 2019, with a total of 241 Hungarian productions — including feature films, shorts, documentaries and TV series — produced in 2021.Despite such encouraging signs, not everyone believes the outlook for the industry is so rosy.“It is booming.
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