Hungary has selected Laszlo Nemes‘ Orphan as the official submission for best international feature film at the Oscars.
Orphan, Nemes’ third feature film follows a young Jewish boy in 1957. In Budapest, after the uprising against the Communist regime, Andor — raised by his mother with idealized tales of his dead father — has his world turned upside down when a brutish man appears, claiming to be his true father.
Nemes co-wrote the screenplay with Clara Royer, who was his writing partner on the award-winning Son of Saul and Sunset. The production also reunited Nemes with cinematographer Matyas Erdely.
The Hungarian-language film had its world premiere in the main competition at this year’s Venice Film Festival, where it competed for the coveted Golden Lion.
Orphan was produced with the support of NFI Hungary, Mid March Media and AR Content alongside the U.K.’s Global Screen Fund, France’s CNC, and Germany’s FFA, as a co-production of Pioneer Pictures (Hungary), Good Chaos (U.K.) with Alexander Rodnyansky for AR Content, Gregory Jankilevitsch for Mid March Media, Alexander Bazarov and Juliette Schrameck for Lumen, as well as Thanassis Karathanos and Martin Hampel for Twenty Twenty Vision.
Orphan was filmed mostly in Budapest, as well as at NFI Studio’s backlot, the newly constructed outdoor set built as part of the recent monumental expansion of the 31-hectare facility.
