Word-of-mouth most important for Son of Saul, says director

Budapest (MTI) – Word-of-mouth is the most important thing for the film “Son of Saul”, director Laszlo Nemes Jeles told a press conference in Budapest on Thursday.

Last weekend, “Son of Saul” won the Grand Prix as well as the International Federation of Film Critics (FIPRESCI) prize at the 68th Cannes Film Festival.

The film takes place at the Auschwitz concentration camp and tells the story of Saul Auslaunder, a fictional Jewish member of the death camp’s Sonderkommando charged with aiding with the disposal of gas chamber victims.

Producer Gabor Sipos said that the film’s distribution rights have been sold to 48 countries so far, including Germany, the United States, Australia, South Korea and Japan. He said the initial potential foreign production partners all considered taking on the first-time director’s project “too risky”, after which the Hungarian National Film Fund stepped in to fund the film.

Nemes Jeles said he wanted the viewing experience to “reach the souls” of viewers. He said he had long been interested in doing a film about the Auschwitz Sonderkommando by the time he approached future co-writer Clara Royer with his idea for a screenplay.

“He approached me with a simple sentence, to which I replied: this is a film,” Royer recalled. Nemes Jeles further elaborated on that fateful sentence: “A man cremating people in the crematory finds the body of a child whom he believes is his son, and tries to bury him.”

Lead actor Geza Rohrig, a poet and amateur actor living in New York, said “Son of Saul” was not just a Holocaust film. He said he wanted the film to be seen by as many people as possible. Rohrig said the central theme of the film could have been presented in any historical era.

Photo: MTI

Source: http://mtva.hu/hu/hungary-matters