08/02/2021 - András Ötvös leads the cast of the filmmaker’s second feature film, a Filmfabriq and Little Bus production set to be sold by NFI World Sales

András Ötvös and Emőke Zsigmond on the set of Christmas Flame (© Attila Takács)

Having kicked off on 29 December, filming on Christmas Flame by Daniel Tiszeker is progressing in Budapest where it is set to wrap mid-March. After making quite an impression with his debut feature #Sohavegetnemeros, a comedy produced independently which proved to be something of a "sleeper" in 2016 and ultimately walked away with the 2017 Audience Prize at the Hungarian Film Awards, the filmmaker has this time assembled a cast led by András Ötvös (at his absolute best in Heavenly Shift [+see also:
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film profile], also well-received in Open [+see also:
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film profile] and whom we’ll soon be seeing in Bullhorn Lullaby) and Emöke Zsigmond (who was also in on the act for Tiszeker’s #Sohavegetnemeros).

Stealing similar focus in the cast are Péter Scherer (Kincsem – Bet on Revenge [+see also:
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film profile]), Lia Pokorny (Well [+see also:
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Written by Boldizsár Fehér, Gáspár Fehér and András Dezsõ Horváth, the story revolves around Arnold, a confident and popular firefighter who loves his job and his girlfriend. But when his romantic wedding proposal goes up in smoke, he develops a fear of heights and starts to suffer strange visions. He finds he can no longer perform his duties properly and is side-lined, working instead as a stand-by firefighter at a local Christmas market, which he hates. Enter Eszter, a teacher who puts together an over-the-top holiday performance with a bunch of ten-year-olds. She’s the one who starts to cure Arnold's vertigo - and perhaps, eventually, his broken heart…

Produced by Gábor Osváth on behalf of Filmfabriq and by Balázs Lévai for Little Bus Production, Christmas Flame is endowed with a €2.5m budget, which includes a subsidy from the National Film Institute Hungary. Scheduled for a total of 41 days in Budapest, filming is unfolding under the aegis of director of photography Ádám Pataki (the director’s long-term partner in crime). Distribution in Hungary will be managed by InterCom (over the 2021 Christmas holidays), whilst international sales are steered by NFI World Sales.

For the record, Filmfabriq unveiled Eviction by Máté Fazekas during the Connecting Cottbus Work in Progress event in November last year (read our article) whilst other recent works include On the Quiet by Zoltán Nagy (discovered in Tallin in 2019), Captives [+see also:
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interview: Alexa Bakony
film profile] which triumphed at the Sarajevo Film Festival/Balkan Documentary Centre’s Docu Rough Cut Boutique back in August.

(Translated from French)