Oscar-winning Hungarian director László Nemes has wrapped filming on his long-awaited feature Orphan after a 10-week shoot in Budapest.
The production has released a first look image of 12 year-old newcomer Bojtorján Barabas in the lead role of Andor, the 12-year-old protagonist who learns about his own genesis in the ruins of the 1956 Hungarian uprising against the communist dictatorship.
The film follows the boy’s painful journey when a man appears from his mother’s past and he discovers the true story of her survival during World War II. Andor has to come to terms with this man as a usurping father he only has hatred for.
Orphan is Nemes’ third film after Sunset, which world premiered in Venice in 2018, and his Oscar-winning breakthrough Son of Saul, which won Cannes Grand Prize of the Jury in 2015, before clinching Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards the following year.
Balagasz is joined in the cast by Gregory Gadebois, Andrea Waskovics, Marcin Czarnik and newcomer Eliz Szabo.
Mátyás Erdély, who shot Son Of Saul and Sunset with Nemes, was director of photography and shot on 35mm film.
The film is produced by Ildiko Kemeny and Ferenc Szale of Pioneer Pictures and Mike Goodridge of Good Chaos alongside Nemes.
Alexander Rodnyansky of AR Content and Gregory Jankilevitsch Mid March Media (MMM) are also producers. Juliette Schrameck of Lumen (France) and Thanassis Karathanos and Martin Hampel of Twenty Twenty Vision Filmproduktion (Germany) are co-producers.
The film is being financed by Hungary’s National Film Institute (NFI), AR Content and Mid March Media alongside ARTE Grand Accord, BFI Global Screen Fund, France’s CNC, and Germany’s FFA and Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg. It is a Hungary-UK-France-Germany co-production.
Paris-based Charades and Warsaw-based New Europe Film Sales are handling world sales on the film.
