02/09/2026 - VENICE 2026: Lili Horvát takes an exploratory dive into couples’ relationships in a highly original and enigmatic story combining realism and astrophysical science-fiction

Rupert Friend and Mackenzie Davis in My Notes on Mars

"We don’t recognise things not covered by our rules." One-of-a-kind Hungarian director Lili Horvát embarks the audience on a deeply intriguing and intricately mapped out, multi-dimensional journey in her third feature, My Notes on Mars, which has been unveiled in the Giornate degli Autori line-up of the 83rd Venice International Film Festival.

A "new concept of underground mission" is skilfully developed (in English this time round) in this new movie by the director who’s keen on analysis by way of sampling, metaphors and mystery while treading in science-based tracks. In fact, following on from the neurosurgeon who lead her previous film (Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time), it’s an astrophysicist who’s left MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) but who’s still obsessed with the mystery of Mars, a planet uninhabitable for human beings, who takes centre stage in this new opus which flirts (to say the least) with the line separating realist fiction from pure science-fiction.

"Where are you?", "Where were you? ", "Who are you?". For Sam (Rupert Friend), living with Margot (Mackenzie Davis) is anything but easy. Their plan to move to the Hungarian countryside for a year and ride horses doesn’t seem a good fit for the latter who skips her own birthday dinner in favour of a trip to Budapest’s Observatory. In fact, this young forty-something woman (whom we learn has experienced depression in the past) is in the throes of an epiphany concerning the absence of water or any kind of magnetic field on Mars. As if in a trance, she returns to her old notebook and her equations on the subject, sending a very early-morning email summarising her revolutionary theory to a former acquaintance who works for NASA. With tensions running high, the couple head off on a mountain hike during which Margot disappears. She’s presumed dead but reappears two months later, acting strange, suffering with amnesia and determined to destroy her notebook on Mars. Sam tries to adapt to this new woman, but a string of surprises await him…

Leaving the audience ample time to weigh up the various hypotheses implied by Margot’s strange behaviour (and the new light in her eyes), Lili Horvát (who wrote the film’s brilliant, mould-breaking screenplay) lends this work – which unfolds along classic genre film lines (human doubles, the 4th dimension, top-secret military plans to colonise Mars, the possibility of extraterrestrial life, etc.) - an incredibly personal, almost "Antonionian" and slightly Melancholia-infused atmosphere. It’s an audacious approach, masking a couple in crisis and wrestling with transformation, which is delivered with great artistic talent (courtesy of Róbert Maly’s wonderful cinematography, Gábor Keresztes’s incredible music, not to mention highly suggestive set design, inventive narrative twists…) and which results in a film fully owning its opaque, modern spellbinding air.

My Notes on Mars was produced by Poste Restante, Amour Fou Vienna and Obala Art Centar, in co-production with AmorFortuna, Komplizen Film, Paradise City, Parangal Film, Protim Video, ZDF/Arte and TRT Production. The feature is sold worldwide by Paradise City Sales.

(Translated from French)

Photogallery 02/09/2026: Venice 2026 - My Notes on Mars

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Lili Horvát
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