Hungary’s National Film Institute, marking the 200th anniversary of the birth of poet-revolutionary, Sándor Petőfi, is set to make a large-scale movie with an extensive budget never before seen in the country. Pro-Fidesz opinion leader, Philip Rákay, received a total of HUF 4.5 billion (EUR 12.7 million) for the movie. The decision, however, definitely raised some eyebrows, as no Hungarian film project has ever received this much funding, and Rákay has never been involved in movie-making.
According to the National Film Institute (NFI), the financial backer of the film, titled Now or Never! [referring to Petőfi’s famous revolutionary poem, “National Song”] will need a complex set of extensive proportions to be built in NFI’s studios in Fót (just outside Budapest), as several spots and buildings of the period have to be reconstructed from scratch. The shooting will take 106 days in total, starting in April and involving thousands of extras and some 200 voiced actors. According to the plans, it will be released in 2023.
The movie will be based on the screenplay by Philip Rákay, Vajk Szente, and Márk Kis-Szabó, and directed by Balázs Lóth, while Rákay will be the film’s producer, too.
Just as the news was made public, it caused some uproar. Jászai-prized theater director, founder of Krétakör community, Árpád Schilling, for example, highlighted that Rákay has never been involved in making artistic productions, “…yet now he has more money to satisfy his sudden desires than any Hungarian filmmaker has ever received over the last 100 years.”
He also pointed out that with this amount at least 10 normal budget Hungarian films could be made, and predicts the movie to be forgotten and overlooked soon in addition to financial loss. “What will be left is the huge, unashamedly huge salaries. New houses, estates, stables [reference to recent press reports about Rákay’s luxurious lifestyle], and swimming pools will be built. Philip Rákay and his closest friends will make hundreds of millions from this party, and they don’t care that the film itself will simply disappear in a year or two, never to be remembered, not even by those who helped to make it,” he argued.
Perhaps somewhat in reaction to the criticism, Rákay explained the background in an interview with Fidesz-linked Index. “Nominally this is the biggest amount, but in real terms, I don’t think so,” he said about the high costs, also promising that the movie won’t be a Fidesz campaign movie. He says he hopes that the movie will be an “important crown jewel” of the 2023 Petőfi Memorial Year.
He also lambasted the Hungarian film industry, which he says was “a very enclosed world,” and “for many decades was all about how to weave a social web of “grand old men” around themselves and their students with state money.” Rákay himself admitted that there were actors who had declined to appear in the movie due to his involvement.