AFFRICATE
Anna Gyimesi
Hungary
A single mother’s adventure by the seaside leads her to recognise her unnecessary martyrdom for her disabled teenage daughter.
SYNOPSIS
Klára is raising her two teenage daughters alone. Léna, the elder, has a movement disability. The three of them go on an off-season holiday to the seaside, where they encounter Mark, a young hotel worker. The young man invites the girls to participate at the hotel’s talent show. His flirtation disturbs Klára. While Léna and Gréti perform their dance on the stage, Mark leaves the show. Klára is angered and decides to tell him off. When she finds Mark on the shore, their fight turns into a sudden intimacy that exposes the woman’s desires.
INTENTION
Conflicts in mother-daughter relationships were always in the focus of my interest. I used to tell these kinds of stories from my point of view but by telling Klára’s story, I wanted to investigate it from the mother’s side. Affricate opposes the common belief that the responsibilities of motherhood should always precede women’s own desires. Klára is under extreme pressure: she is raising a disabled teenage girl and her rebellious sister as a single parent. She has to face society’s expectations, the power of tabooing, and her own moral standards. Her thirst to take revenge on the social roles that force a mother into self-sacrifice turns into action. How can a mother detach from her child? Is it allowed to have more, separate social roles when you are raising a disabled child? How to be a mother and a woman with sexual desire at the same time? Affricate investigates these topics that are still taboos in many parts of the world while depicting the borders and limits of unnecessary self-sacrification.
DIRECTOR
Anna Gyimesi
Anna Gyimesi was born in 1985, in Budapest. After receiving her degree in Medicine in 2011, she turned to filmmaking. She graduated from the Film Directing program of the University of Theater and Film Arts, Budapest (SZFE) in 2019, and from Documentary Film Directing in the Docnomads Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Course in 2021. With Affricate she won the Cinelink award for the best pitch at Talent Sarajevo Pack&Pitch 2020. She is currently developing her debut fiction film.
PRODUCER
Ádám Felszeghy
Ádám Felszeghy joined the team at Umbrella, one of Hungary’s leading production houses, in 2018. In 2021, he shot his first feature film, which is in post-production, while his second is in the pre-production phase. Besides that, he is working on Hungary’s first feature-length animated documentary.
Genre
Drama
Length
28 min
Language
Hungarian, Croatian, English
Shooting location
Rovinj, Croatia & Budapest, Hungary
Production company
Umbrella (Hungary)
Estimated budget
€97.000
Secured funding
National Film Institute Hungary - €30.000,
Hungarian Tax Rebate - €30.000, Umbrella - €37.000
Looking for
Sales, Distribution, Festivals