Irisz and Sunset

Even before starting my first feature Son of Saul, I had in mind the idea of making a film about a woman, alone, lost in her world, a world she tries but ultimately fails to understand. Probably under the influence of a certain literary and cinematographic tradition of Central Europe, I’ve been drawn to a main character that is partly surrounded by mystery and whose actions the audience has to assess and re-assess continuously, even becoming at some point a figure of an unexpected dimension, like a strange Joan of Arc of Middle Europe.

Unlike Son of Saul, which had a meticulous documentary-style approach, Sunset resembles a tale, a mystery in itself where the viewer is invited on this journey to find, along with the main character, a possible way through this maze of facades and layers. From the outset, I imagined this movie as a way to plunge the viewer into a personal labyrinth, along Irisz’s quest to find her brother and ultimately the meaning of the world she wants to discover. Behind every clue she seems to find, there is contradictory information. Behind every layer, a new one is revealed and the main character herself might be unaware of the process taking place deep within her. Irisz is a character caught between light and darkness, beauty and menace, incapable of dealing with the grey zones. In this sense, Sunset is also a story of a girl, the blooming of a strange flower.

Sunset, from the outset, intended to follow its main character, Irisz, from close range, allowing a highly intimate approach in an unusual period movie. I also tried to use sound, which is a cornerstone of a strategy of immersion, to submerge the audience into an unknown world, where people speak different languages. This seems necessary to me. To reach the viewer differently is my ultimate goal, after making the audience feel and think.

Sunset, our times and Europe

Sunset is a film about a civilization at its crossroads. In the heart of Europe, at the height of progress and technology, the personal story of a young woman becomes the reflection of a process that is in itself, the birth of the 20th century. A century ago, from the height of its zenith, Europe committed suicide. This suicide remains a mystery until this very day, though historians haved tried to solve it. It is, as if a civilization, at its pinnacle, was already producing the poison that would bring it down. At the core of this movie lies this personal preoccupation.

Sunset is set before World War I in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a seemingly prosperous, multi-national state of a dozen languages and many peoples, with its blooming capitals Vienna and Budapest, the cultural center of the world. And yet, against this flowering backdrop is the reality of the hidden forces about to tear it apart.

As a child, I would listen to the stories of my grandmother who was born in 1914. Her life spanned the century, taken by the turmoil of the European continent, through all totalitarian regimes, genocides, failed revolutions and wars. She was, in a way, Europe herself.

My deep European roots have pushed me to wonder about the age we live in now and the ages of our forefathers, how thin the veneer of civilization can be, and what lies beyond. In our modern, post-nation state world, we seem to forget the deep dynamics of history, and in our boundless love for technology and science, we seem to forget how close to the brink of destruction they can bring us. I believe we live in a world that is not that far from the one before the Great War of 1914. A world utterly blind to the forces of destruction it feeds at its core. We are not far from the processes that took place in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy.

Subjectivity, civilization and cinema

As a filmmaker, I am drawn to discovering how the human soul (subjectivity), and the collective soul of civilization can meet. In imagining Sunset, I tried to find the junction between the story of an individual and the state of the world in which the heroine exists. I’ve always wanted to find new ways to present audiences with a subjective experience of uncertainty and fragility, the underlying current of our very human condition. As in Son of Saul, I do not want to present the audience with a conventional period piece. I thought we could achieve more by giving a glimpse of a world up close and not trying to fully uncover it. The imagination of the viewer would do the rest.

I find the standardization of current cinema and television suspicious and I remain resolved to find new ways of representing images and stories, not relying on over-demonstrating and over-contextualizing methods. Movies, today, refuse to trust the audience. I wanted to reconnect the audience with the adventurous essence of motion pictures.

I feel the experience audiences have while watching today’s movies is increasingly unsatisfactory, reduced to an industrialized language for easier understanding, ignoring the viewer’s journey. Movies, today, refuse to trust the audience. I directed Sunset in a manner that may seem strange to someone who fully embraces today’s filmmaking practices. I wanted to reconnect the audience with the adventurous essence of motion pictures.

“Less is more” - our visual approach relied on an organic spatial strategy thanks to an ever- moving camera. As we dive into the world of a seemingly naive and innocent character, hopefully, we discover everything with her in an organic way. A volatile subjective flow of information turns the story of a young girl into a darker tale of decay.

In a cinematic world relying less and less on real sets, and more and more on computers and visual effects, I wanted to take a stance that cinema has everything to do with the magic of physics, optics and chemicals. It is a trick of perception, of light and darkness. We therefore relied on built sets in a real city – Budapest, the use of photochemically exposed and developed film and real effects on set. We used complicated, choreographed long scenes to bring Sunset into the physical world, one that the audience can believe in.

This film is my personal testimony to the love of cinema, almost a century after the hopefulness of Sunrise by Murnau – a movie to which we pay homage. I hope that Sunset carries in itself something of the interrogations embodied by Murnau’s film.

It seems to me that we are again at the dawn of a new cinematic era, a crossroads where an unconditional love for digital technologies and clear-cut dramaturgy could risk us losing the magic and unrelenting inventiveness of cinema.