Film Archive

Out

Czech Films 2016–2017 2017 / Out / Slovak Republic, Hungary, Czech Republic 2017

Now in his 50s, when Agoston loses his job he goes out to find another. His journey, punctuated by a variety of bizarre encounters, leads him to the Baltic Sea – appropriate considering that his greatest dream is to catch a big fish. The film by Slovak director György Kristóf, shot as a Czech coproduction, was selected for the Cannes festival’s second-seeded competition, Un Certain Regard.

Synopsis

The old proverb that “every ending is another beginning” precisely describes the case of 50-year-old Ágoston, an ethnic Hungarian from Slovakia who loses his job and leaves his family behind in order to head north to the Baltics in search of a job and to do some solid fishing. But he doesn’t exactly get a warm welcome as a new welder in the Latvian port town where he ends up – in fact, we’re just at the beginning of an unpredictable and slightly melancholy (but hardly depressing) odyssey full of bizarre encounters. The first Slovak film to be shown in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section in the country’s modern history, Out invites viewers on a journey through Eastern Europe filled with surreal, enchanting, bittersweet, and comic episodes. Director György Kristóf presents his personal take on the state of post-communist society through a series of masterfully arranged and often fascinating scenes that add significantly to the dreamlike mood of this charismatic debut film.

Karel Och

About the film

88 min / Color, DCP

Director György Kristóf / Screenplay György Kristóf, Eszter Horváth, Gábor Papp / Dir. of Photography Gergely Pohárnok / Music Miroslav Tóth / Editor Adam Brothánek / Art Director Branislav Mihálik / Producer Marek Urban, Ferenc Pusztai, Jiří Konečný / Production sentimentalfilm / Coproduction KMH Film, endorfilm, Mirage Film, Punkchart Films, RTVS, FAMU, Film Angels Productions / Cast Sándor Terhes, Éva Bandor, Judit Bárdos, leva Norvele Kristóf, Guna Zarina, Viktor Nemets, Ieva Aleksandrova-Eklone, Tibor Gáspár / Sales Cercamon / Contact endorfilm
www: www.outthefilm.com

About the director

György Kristóf (b. 1982, Košice, Czechoslovakia) worked as a journalist while attending secondary school in neighboring Hungary. He caught the cinema bug while studying philosophy at Miskolc University, and deepened his passion for motion pictures while working as an assistant on Hungarian films and on big Hollywood productions shot in Hungary. During his studies at Prague’s Film Academy (FAMU), which he began in 2008, he shot several short movies that collected a variety of prizes from more than fifty festivals. Before studying for his master’s degree, he spent a year in the Latvian capital of Riga, where he earned a living shooting commercials. His feature-length debut Out was screened in the Un Certain Regard competition at the 70th Cannes fest.