An interview with Rita Balogh, producer for Hungarian company Other Films, now selected for the 2024 Emerging Producers programme. Read her EP profile here.

Why do you produce documentaries? Do you see documentary cinema as an instrument of social and political change?
Rita Balogh: Documentaries have been my passion since I can remember, for me, this is the most authentic language for expression. I don’t really have a logical explanation, except maybe that if in the near future, AI makes animation and fiction films a reality, then we, documentary filmmakers, may finally feel that the world is ours.

How do you achieve and maintain work-life balance and foster overall well-being?
I don’t have a recipe, I’m facing challenges all the time, and very often I’m the one responsible for the new complications. But my general attitude of enjoying finding solutions is a big help.

Where do you find audiences for your films?
In 2014, I co-founded the Budapest International Documentary Festival, I have opened an open-air cinema and I’m trying to come up with new ideas for screening opportunities all the time. Audience and community building, unconventional promotional methods and alternative distribution in general have always been important fields of interest for me. It contributed a lot to my work as a producer. But I also see the challenges, and I think that we have to be hard-working, brave and persistent when negotiating and communicating about our films.

What projects do you have underway (including fiction films and other projects)?
We have been shooting an observational documentary for 3 years in the backstage of a fine-dining restaurant (the first one that won two-Michelin stars in Easter-Europe) entitled Metamorphosis. The directors of the film, Peter Akar and Ambrus Fatér, have been focusing on three fascinating characters, the owner, Anna, the creative manager and the chef as they try to experiment to see if a democratic setup could work inside the kitchen, while also reinventing the menu and preparing for an opening in 2024. The film is supported by the National Film Fund of Hungary, and for finishing the film, we are in search of co-producers and/ or broadcasters in Denmark, Germany or Austria.

As a minority co-producer, we are finishing a docu series for ARTE in 2024, entitled Iron Curtain, Life Under Soviet Occupation directed by Tania Rakhmanova. Using a range of testimonials of daily life, interviews, new historiography, and archives – home movies, propaganda films and fictions from the era - this documentary series will tell the story of Sovietization as experienced from the inside.

Caretaker, directed by Ambrus Hernádi is poetic feature documentary about the complexities of labor migration, in development. Our main character is a Hungarian woman on the brink of the Hungarian society who becomes an important and respected person in Germany, as a caretaker of the elderly, but is constantly longing for her home where her half-built house and her alcoholic husband are waiting for her, and where they can have a good laugh at themselves. We are currently searching for a German co-producer, and broadcasters. 

With director Robert Lakatos, we have been working together since 2016 when we started the feature documentary entitled Whose Dog Am I? that premiered in Warsaw, 2022 followed by many screenings around Europe. We are currently developing a fiction film and a documentary together both characterized by Lakatos’s humour and self-reflection that make all his work memorable.

Working as a filmmaker as well, occasionally I become my own producer, like in the case of the coming-of-age documentary about Generation Z entitled Kind of Adults, that I’m co-directing along with Peter Akar, and co-producing with Gül Togay. While focusing on the emotional journey of our characters, a bunch of high-school friends – we are there when the biggest and most romantic first love ends, when depression crawls into the space left by the school, when being alone in a new country is both frightening and exciting – we are also gaining a deeper understanding of the specialties of their generation. The development of the project has been supported by Creative Europe, and we are currently in search for co-producers from Italy and the Netherlands, two important shooting locations of the film.

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EMERGING PRODUCERS is a leading promotional and educational project, which brings together talented European documentary film producers. The programme is organised and curated by the Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival.

Deadline for applications to the EMERGING PRODUCERS 2025 edition is 31st March 2024.