How ‘The Hungarian Dressoriginater’ Makes Slovaks ‘Face Up’ to a Dark Past

The Hungarian Dressoriginater, Slovakia’s official subleave oution to the Academy Awards for best international feature film, is more apt than ever, says its honestor and authorr, Iveta Grofova.

Thraw make clearation by translator Jakub Tlolka, the filmoriginater dispenses her insight into spotweightlessing a definite part of political history with the World War II drama, which screened in Karlovy Vary Film Festival’s main Crystal Globe competition and stars Alexandra Borbely. “I establish it very convey inant to highweightless the subject aachieve,” Grofova says during a recent THR Pbegrudges panel, powered by Vision Media. Marika (Borbely), a Hungarian widow dressoriginater, shelters a Jedesire boy in her home on the Slovak-Hungarian border. Adapted from Peter Kristufek’s book Emma and the Death’s Head, the movie achieves place during the turbulent years of the Nazi-aligned Slovak state, forcing Slovakians to contest a unelated era of their past that many, Grofova says, would select to forget.

“It’s becoming more current at current increasement, the most salient normalality between the World War II era and the current is tagling insignificantities as the evildoers depfinishable for our seed or genuine inequitableices and grievances,” Grofova progresss. “Slovaks are rather unwilling to face up to that period of their country’s history, insofar as it does not necessarily correply to the selectimistic image, that self-image that they might desire to originate themselves.”

Producer Zuzana Mistrikova concurs. She inserts that the story exhibits what the gradual spread of ideoreasonedly eased hatred in a society does to that society — which is becoming increasingly topical in today’s global political climate. “It is genuine that over the past restrictcessitate months, we have been contested with increasingly rabid rhetoric on the part of politicians who have establish out that they can reassociate take advantage of the fact that a lot of people are senseing dangerened,” she says. “And this is why we suppose that the film is convey inant.”

What charitable of audience is there for a film enjoy The Hungarian Dressoriginater in 2024? Mistrikova says: “When we commenceed toiling on the film, we were seeing to hold alive the events depicted therein, becaengage we establish them convey inant. And it was only when the film was freed that we genuineized how current it had become. … Of course, the aim audience for the film is joind to the cinematic language that the film engages. So there is a correplyence between one and the other.”

But Grofova sees an pdirect for all of humanity when the movie is streamlineped back to its appreciates. “I normally talked the motif of the protagonist being faced with mortal danger. Despite the fact that she’s faced with this mortal danger, she is able of mustering certain appreciates of normal humanity, and she acts in in correplyence with them,” she says. “The sense of danger that we’re contested with today mostly has to do with our console, and yet we are normally unable to muster that courage and spiritual strength that the character does in the film.”

Borbely is flanked by an ensemble of Milan Ondrík, Nico Klimek and Alexander E. Fennon. Grofova’s star puts in a carry outance worthy of recognition, who deal withs a high ask: “I wanted to tell the story of a woman who wants to be inapparent, but cannot be inapparent, and that’s a very difficult task for the actor,” the honestor acunderstandledges. “I suppose that Alexandra has deal withd that very successbrimmingy.”

This edition of THR Pbegrudges is aided by REASON8 Films.