Franz Kafka and Don Quixote will feel right at home when they watch this movie Ground floor (Ground floor) The new film by Hungarian director Gabor Reisz. But former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is unlikely to be amused.
Back in 2023, Reisz Explanation of everythingA dramatic look at the culture wars won the Best Film award at the Horizons program in Venice. Now, it’s back at the Venice Film Festival, this time in the Venice Spotlight section, with a sharp social and political satire. Ground floor is a deep dive into an imaginative journey into an existential crisis filled with silliness, dark humor, political metaphors, and mold – yes mold!
The film will have its world premiere in Venice on Thursday, September 10, and stars Adam Tomba (Blue heron) as Kristoff, a failed artist. One day when he and his wife want to go on vacation on the lake, he learns that he is going to become a father and discovers a strange black mold in their apartment. Much to his wife’s anger, the usually apathetic man is pushed to take rare action to solve the mold problem. He doesn’t even really know the people in the building. Can he fix the emergency rot and change things for the better?
Or, as a record of Ground floor “Which will collapse faster,” he says, “the building in which Christoph lives, or the indifference from which he wakes up to find himself at the forefront of a tragic local revolution?”
Rodrigo Crespo, Bettina Goza, Tondi Baxco, György Gazo, Julie Kindel, Eva Timar and Marcelo Fonte also star in the film. Ground floorwhich Rhys co-wrote with Eva Schulz (Explanation of everything) and Zsófi Reisz-Varga. Christophe Pixe handled the cinematography, while Ries and Schulz edited the film with David Jancso and Ilka Janka Nagy. Films Boutique is handling sales.
THR Can premiere exclusively for a clip from Ground floor. Watch the scene that sets Kristoff on his extraordinary journey.
Now that you’ve seen the film’s first teaser, here’s how Reisz describes his key inspirations, the themes he wanted to explore, and his take on the Hungarian way Ground floor He is.
Where did the idea come from to set the film in an apartment building threatened by mold and other issues, a metaphor or myth for the larger world?
rice Actually, the original idea came from my producer, Julia Birx. She can imagine a movie being shot at a meeting of the building’s residents. You probably don’t know anything about residents’ meetings. It’s really specific to (our) country. Every Hungarian can communicate easily because in every apartment building, you have to go to this meeting twice a year. You can’t imagine how ridiculous this kind of meeting is because everything is about the apartment, the stairs, cleaning supplies, and how to spend money. Therefore, there are usually a lot of arguments.
When she told me about this idea, my answer was: “Okay, let’s start with this, and I’ll try to think about it.” It was 2024 when we talked about the story, and I felt that the (political) system and atmosphere in Hungary were in such a bad state that I couldn’t think of anything else but how the idea of construction related to how to live in Hungary. So, that was the starting point.
Black mold is something that always seems terrible to people because it is really expensive to get rid of. I talked about the metaphorical part. From the beginning, it was clear that if we shot something in an apartment building, it was of course about Hungary in some way in a small version, in a microcosm.
Can you tell me more about the atmosphere in the country that you found so bad?
About halfway through the screenwriting process, co-writer Eva Schulz and I realized that the fundamental problem was society’s apathy. That’s the main reason why I wanted to make this film, a little bit, to bring about a revolution or something, even if it sounds naive. But I think the mission of every art form, as well as filmmaking, is to talk a little bit about problems and make a difference in society in one way or another.
It’s funny because I heard a year before Béla Tarr Atar died that someone asked him if he felt he had changed anything with his amazing film, and he said no, he didn’t think so – maybe just a little.
How do you describe tone? Ground floor compare with Explanation of everything?
Our previous film was a social drama, and some parts were maybe a bit funny. And with this movie, I found that the darkness was so intense that we felt like we needed to lighten up a little bit. Of course, the Hungarian humor is a bit dark. It is probably related to English humor and Czech humour.
With the change of government in Hungary, do you feel more optimistic?
I think I’m a bit optimistic. We actually changed the ending of the movie. Filming began in March, and the election was on April 12. During the editing process, I always check in with my co-writer. And we started discussing the ending because the original ending was really dark. There was no sunrise. So the idea of sunrise came later, on my optimistic side. That’s not much because I’m not exactly optimistic. I have little hope. (The country) is like the house, still the same. Therefore, you have to do a lot of work.
Are you working on a new movie?
With the political change in the elections, there will be a new system (for film financing) in Hungary. We haven’t had any public money for a long time. If you know you won’t have more than €200,000 ($233,000) for the movie, you can’t think of a high-level concept. But I hope that now we can start with a blank page and write only what we want to write.
