15/02/2025 - BERLINALE 2025: We talked to the Hungarian filmmaker about what inspired his debut feature, which tackles the moral and emotional dilemmas faced by parents

Hungarian director Bálint Dániel Sós presented his first feature film at this year's Berlinale in the Perspectives section. Growing Down [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Bálint Dániel Sós
film profile] is an emotionally intense and perfectly crafted black and white drama about a parent in a moral conflict. We spoke to the director about his inspiration for the story and his visual concept for the film. 

Cineuropa: Were you inspired by real events, by a real case? 
Bálint Dániel Sós: No, it was not a real case. I was inspired by something from my own life, and my struggle as a parent. I remember the exact situation, when this film popped into my mind. I was on the playground with my little children. They behaved badly and other children's parents came to me, shouting and wanting justice. Immediately, two really different instincts came to me at the same time. Both were very strong. One was that I wanted to scold my children, to correct their behaviour and talk to them about morality. The second, though, was the really strong feeling that I wanted to protect them. It was a weird, very ambiguous one. What I experienced was much smaller than in the film, but I think every parent knows this kind of situation. I wanted to deal with the ambiguity of it. In such moments, you act following your reflexes. It's really interesting what happens, because you are not really in control of those. You meet something deep in yourself. Everyone thinks that they would do the right thing, the morally right thing. We have a certain image of ourselves. But when things actually happen, you are acting on impulse and this impulse might not be the thing that you imagine about yourself. I wanted to explore the nuances of the choice you make and what happens afterwards. 

What makes the film so powerful is that, as an audience, we understand all the parties involved. Wasn't it difficult to write the script without having a clear antagonist? 
Yes, it was. I wrote the script together with Gergő Nagy, a writer friend. Most of the writing were discussions between us. It was definitely tough, because if you are too vague, people get lost and you are not saying anything. I just wanted to run this fine line where everybody's actions feel motivated, and everybody's trying to do the right thing. But the right thing changes according to the situation. I wanted to explore how you rationalise certain thoughts and how you end up in a spiral and one action leads to another. 

How was your collaboration with your main actor, and why did you choose him for the role of the father?
Szabolcs Hajdu he's the kind of person with whom viewers can really relate. And you can imagine him being any kind of person, a nice person or a not-so-nice person. I wanted a character that you could meet without making presumptions. I really wanted the actions to feel as though they were growing out of the situation. The reason he said yes to the role was that he felt connected to Sándor. He felt that he could have done similar things. He's a father, also. He felt what I wrote. A lot of struggles that he has were mirroring my own. I think he's really close to this person, and he didn't really need to add anything superficial, to add too much to the role. 

Did you choose to do the film in black and white as a statement, to say that things often aren't simply either black or white? 
You could surely put it this way, but it wasn't the reason behind it. I wanted to match the form with the content. This story could take place basically anytime and in any corner of the world. We felt that this is a kind of timeless tragedy, a parable. I wanted to put this timelessness into the form. This is also why we didn't have any landmarks or sites that recalled Hungary specifically. We chose a minimalist approach to emphasise the story and the characters. The setting is almost theatrical. The black and white helped maintain a unique and homogeneous world. For a low budget film, it means also better control.