13/11/2014 - Produced by Café Film, the feature debut by Isti Madarász is currently in post-production; Dénes Száraz, Dorina Martinovics and Zsolt Anger star

One of Hungarian cinema’s greatest strengths is to regularly unveil fresh talent, as demonstrated by Gábor Reisz, for instance, whose career is currently getting off to a flying start at the national box office with For Some Inexplicable Reason [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] (read the review).

A brand-new name has just been added to this list of young filmmakers to keep a close eye on: that of Isti Madarász, whose feature debut, Loop (Hurok), has just entered post-production. After turning heads at the Hungarian Film Week in 2001 with his self-produced short Moral Bypass, the filmmaker firmly established himself with Sooner or Later (which screened at the Berlinale in 2007, among other festivals) before going on to direct The Invincibles for the small screen in 2013. The cast of his fiction feature debut, a thriller based around time warps, includes Dénes Száraz, Dorina Martinovics, Zsolt Anger (winner of the Best Actor Award at the Hungarian Film Week in 2008 for The Investigator) and Géza Hegedus D.

Written by the director himself, the story’s main character is Adam, who is employed by faceless foreign partners to smuggle illegal medical substances out of the country. But this time, he and his girlfriend, Anna, plan to make off with the consignment and start a new life for themselves. They are about to leave, when they discover that she is pregnant, and so Adam decides to abandon Anna to her fate and go it alone. This is one of a series of bad decisions that send the story spinning slowly out of control. The first catastrophe comes when Adam is forced to witness Anna’s cruel death in what appears to be an unrelated traffic accident. But just before she dies, Anna tries to warn him: whatever he does or wherever he goes, their bosses will track him down and put a bullet in his brain. Adam is then hurled back in time to the point when he sees Anna’s accident, just as he is hurrying to flee the country. And our “hero” soon realises that he has become caught up in a suffocating loop of events, which he will only be able to break by using all of his wit and courage, and by facing up to his initial decisions...

Heading up the production of Loop is Tamás Hutlassa, for Café Film (which has Nimrod Antal’s Kontroll [+see also:
trailer
film profile] to its credit, in addition to the short film The History of Aviation by Balint Kenyeres and the co-production Land of Storms [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Adam Csaszi
film profile]). The movie is backed by the Hungarian National Film Fund, among other institutions, and the shoot took place in Budapest during September and October, with the talented András Nagy (Joan [+see also:
trailer
film profile], White Palms [+see also:
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trailer
interview: Szabolcs Hajdu
film profile], Bibliothèque Pascal [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Szabolcs Hajdu - director
interview: Szabolcs Hajdu
film profile], The Gambler [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Ignas Jonynas
film profile], Mirage [+see also:
trailer
film profile]) serving as DoP. The theatrical release is scheduled for the last quarter of 2015.

(Translated from French)