To this day, I can still clearly remember what it was like to read the letter from the JEONJU IFF inviting me to make a feature film as part of the Jeonju Digital Project. I was standing in the hallway, ready to pick up my children from school, wondering what to do if I didn't know how I could be useful to the world as a filmmaker. At that time, the film industry in Hungary had been closed down for three years and I had very few opportunities to do what I do best. (Unfortunately, for political reasons, the situation is still the same there.) It was like a moment when a drowning man could breathe again. The JEONJU IFF saved my creative existence. And for that, I am always grateful. 

And I am forever grateful for the six months of euphoria I experienced while making Free Fall. It was a real flow experience that was transmitted to the whole crew. I was so inspired by the unexpected opportunity that I knew immediately that nothing was impossible, and that I would be able to make a feature film from scratch from October to April. There are very few miracles like this in a person's life. It was terribly liberating not to have to go through the regular way of making a film, not to have to apply with a ready-made script, waiting months or even years for the result. The confidence in me that I was going to make the best use of the opportunity and that I could decide on creative matters without any control or external expectations, within the precise limits of the time and money available gave me wings. While we were writing the script, I was already working on the realization, the preproduction, and what we talked about with the actors at the fitting room could still be included in the concept—giving a special personal touch to the surreal, absurd world I wanted to tell about.

It is with much love and gratitude in my heart that I wish the JEONJU Cinema Project a happy birthday, and I wish it a very long life, so that more colleagues of mine can experience this unique way of filmmaking. As we say in Hungary: May God give you long life and may your ears reach down to your ankles! György PÁLFI

Taxidermia (2006), Final Cut: Ladies and Gentlemen (2012), His Master’s Voice (2018)

A Story Woven of Languor
Metaphorical images as the manifestation of a character's subconscious traditionally signify a child's perspective. Such imagery dominates Free Fall, a trademark nightmare by the eccentric Hungarian auteur, György Pálfi, only he twists the angle and shows an elderly woman's projection. The episodic film consists of various grotesque segments taking place in one block of flats, separate chamber plays presumably seen through the eyes of the suicidal lady (Molnár Piroska) in free fall, who jumps from the top of the building. She tries to leave behind a life stuck in post-socialist misery, an unexciting husband, their artificial conversations, and wicked pranks on each other. What follows, her vision of the neighbors' secret lives, dignifies the suffering of retirement without duties and passion, it's the enactment of the painful compulsion to make the day go by, the inventions against the ennui of old age. She observes the plastic-shielded sexual life of a couple with an overwhelming phobia of contamination, the strangely self-evident nudity of a woman in an all-dressed gathering, and a little boy who sees an enormous cow in their apartment, at once as frightening as his violent stepfather and a protective presence in the face of the loathed man—in the latter, Pálfi forms a dialectic between the boy’s and the lady's impression. The rest of the tableaux is just as malformed and black-hearted. However hopeless, by exhibiting the woman’s imagination, Pálfi makes a creative agent out of the ridiculed, disdained archetype of the irritating, voyeuristic old lady. Anna BABOS

Production KMH Film (info@KMHFilm.com), Origo Film Group (film@origofilmgroup.com), Popfilm, Sciapode (info@sciapode.net), Vision Team
Distribution Vertigo Média Kft. (forgalmazas@vertigomedia.hu)

2014 Chicago IFF Gold Hugo (Nominee)

2014 Karlovy Vary IFF Best Director·Label Europa Cinemas·Special Jury Prize (Winner), Crystal Globe (Nominee)