International sales agent Films Boutique has revealed the first sales and a trailer for Hungarian filmmaker Gábor Reisz’s “Explanation for Everything,” which will world premiere at the Venice Film Festival’s Horizons strand.
Films Boutique has sold the film to I Wonder Pictures for Italy and Filmtett for Romania.
The film is Reisz’s third feature after the acclaimed “Some Inexplicable Reason” (2014) and “Bad Poems” (2018). Set in summer in Budapest, the film follows high school student Abel who is struggling to focus on his final exams, while coming to the realization that he is hopelessly in love with his best friend Janka. The studious Janka has her own unrequited love with married history teacher Jakab — who had a previous confrontation with Abel’s conservative father. The tensions of a polarized society come unexpectedly to the surface when Abel’s history graduation exam turns into a national scandal.
“For a long time, I have felt suffocated by the atmosphere of my divided country, which permeates my everyday life. In 2021, the University of Theatre and Film Arts, Budapest lost its autonomy when it was completely reorganized from above as directed by the state, and the professors and students did not agree with this at all,” Reisz says in his director’s notes.
“The young people blockaded the university – for lack of any better means – and events soon took a party politics turn, even though the students’ only aim was to be able to take part in autonomous education. As a filmmaker and former student of the university, I joined their struggle, and one day, on the way home from a demonstration, it occurred to me that we need to talk about the situation that surrounds us, and that every art form, including film, should be a medium through which to do this. This is what prompted the main idea of ‘Explanation for Everything,” Reisz adds.
The film is produced by Proton Cinema and Mphilms with the support of the Slovak Audiovisual Fund.
Watch the trailer here:
