01/03/2016 - Gábor Osváth, Emerging Producer 2016 from Hungary, works for production company Filmfabriq Kft. Cineuropa chatted with him

Gábor Osváth, Emerging Producer 2016 from Hungary, works for production company Filmfabriq Kft.

Cineuropa: What qualities should a documentary producer have these days?
Gábor Osváth: Strength, improvisational skills and a dose of foolish bravery. Financial skills are just something one can learn, but the first three "qualities" come from the inside. All the people I admire possess these qualities. (The foolish bravery was the first one I mastered for sure!) And what’s also vital: loving and understanding movies, and the people making them. 

To what extent do you, as a producer, get involved in the creative process?
It depends on a lot of aspects, but when it comes to documentaries, it is important for me to be around at the birth of a project, or at least at its very early stage. If the first bricks in the project are laid in active partnership with the director, and we agree on the fundamentals, this gives me confidence to further continue. After that I neither need to (nor can) take a hands-on approach: you have to trust the people you work with! I have too many projects, and I can't micro-manage 1 or 2 of them, and especially the making of documentaries can take a very long time. Sure, sometimes it backfires, but I am always learning. And one of the things I’ve learned is that it is great to not produce alone, and these two ladies (Ágnes Horváth-Szabó and Rita Balogh to be specific) whom I have worked with on different movies are very inspiring partners.

What projects do you have under way?  
Right now, we are finishing my first animated short movie, which got into Berlinale Shorts (LOVE by Réka Bucsi). It is a French co-production made with the lovely people at Passion Paris. I have another French-related project, a short fiction called The Virgin of Lost Causes by Sandor Funtek, which will be presented at the European Short Pitch in Luxembourg in early March. My documentary projects include the circus doc, What a Circus!, (currently in the making) and the series, Songs of the Land, of which we have recently finished the pilot episode. I am also shepherding some feature-length projects, including debuts by Bálint Szimler and Péter Szeiler.

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Emerging Producers is a promotional and educational project, which brings together talented European documentary film producers. The programme is organised and curated by the Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival.

Deadline for applications to the Emerging Producers 2017 edition is 31 March, 2016. Click here.