Oscar-nominated Hungarian movie won 10 awards in Toronto

Hungarian supernatural horror Post Mortem (2020), directed by Péter Bergendy, took home “Best Feature Film” bronze and nine additional awards, including “Best Director” and “Best Horror Film” at the Toronto After Dark 2021 festival.

Hungary chose Péter Bergendy’s horror movie to be its official contender for the 2022 Academy Awards for Best International Feature Film, the National Film Institute announced on 6 October.

International success and awards

Post Mortem (2020) premiered at last year’s Warsaw Film Festival. Since then,

the film has been screened at 28 festivals,

including two of the world’s most prestigious horror film festivals: Sitges Film Festival and the London FrightFest Film Festival, writes Index.

So far, Post Mortem (2020) has won a total of 23 awards.

For example, it was awarded four trophies at the Hungarian Motion Picture Awards, including for best cinematography, best editing, best make-up and best production design.

At the Toronto After Dark 2021, the movie took home the following 10 awards:

“Best Feature Film” – audience choice bronze

“Best Horror Film”

“Best Director”

“Best Supporting Actor” (Fruzsina Hais)

“Best Special Effects”

“Best Sound Design”

“Best Cinematography”

“Best Editing”

“Most Scary Film” and

“Film Most Wanted To See A Sequel To”.

Plot

Set in 1918, at the end of World War I and after the devastation of the Spanish flu, the film follows Tomás (played by Viktor Klem), an itinerant photographer wandering through Hungary and photographing the recently deceased with their families. At the call of a 10-year-old orphan girl, Anna (played by Fruzsina Hais), he arrives in a small village where he has an unusually large amount of work and encounters more and more supernatural phenomena. The spirits want to tell him something, and Tomás decides to find out what their purpose is.

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Visual and sound effects

According to Queer.Horror.Movies, “one of the film’s biggest selling features is its stunt work and visual effects. Despite being made for only $2.8 million US, director Péter Bergendy stretches his budget to include not just period-authentic sets and costumes, but a bevvy of truly spectacular FX”.

Sound engineer Gábor Balázs used real animal sounds for the special sound effects and the sound design, including camel, bear, donkey, seal, walrus and orangutan sounds. The voice actors behind the rest of the otherwordly sounds and screams were creative producer Gábor Hellebrandt, Zsolt Anger, Gabriella Hámori and Mari Nagy.

The film will arrive in Hungarian cinemas on 28 October.

You can watch the movie’s trailer here:

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Source: index.hu, queerhorrormovies.com, torontoafterdark.com