A Hungarian film was nominated for a Student Oscar award

Great news. Index.hu reports that, after 22 years, a Hungarian work of art is among the nominees for a Student Academy Award.

The Student Academy Awards, just like the Oscars, is organized by The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences since 1973. Impressively, the list of the previous winners includes Spike Lee, Jaco Van Dormael, Cary Fukunaga, Robert Zemeckis, Trey Parker and John Lasseter. They all won the awards for their exam or diploma films, and then began their successful feature film careers.

The Academy has announced this year’s nominations for the Student Academy Awards on Monday, August 1, and among the works, the Hungarian Hajni Kis’s exam film, Beautiful Figure (Szép Alak) can be found.  She is the student of the University of Theatre and Film Arts in Budapest and is now up for the award for Best Foreign Narrative.

The nominations of the category include 7 films, which were chosen out of 1749 applications by The Academy and will be further judged by a jury of prestigious film professionals later this month. Their decision naming the 3 best works of art (gold, silver, medal evaluations) will be announced at the Student Academy Awards Week which is held between September 18-24, in Los Angeles.

The 17-minute long Beautiful Figure had its debut at the Hungarian Film Week, then participated at the Friss Hús Budapest Short Film Festival. The film critic of Index gave 9 points out of 10 for the film and highlighted the acting of Brigitta Egyed, who gives a wonderful performance as the cleaning lady.

The director, Hajni Kis is to finish her BA studies at the University of Theatre Arts and Sciences in Budapest, as member of the class led by Bence Miklauzic and András Salamon. Beautiful Figure was her exam film of the second year, but notably, her first year exam work, titled 2^nd Floor (2. em.) won 5 awards, including the audience award at CinEast in Luxembourg.

The people creating the film were Hajni Kis and Dániel Daoud script writer; Ákos Nyoszoli cinematographer; Vanda Gorácz editor; Ervin Stark sound engineer; and Ádám Farkas production manager. Anna Nyitrai was the production designer, while the music was composed by András Pongor, who studies to be a sound engineer.

According to the critique, the film is really touching, especially as it includes a moment: the moment which is present in every love story, even those seeming impossible and hopeless, when love appears to have the chance to be fulfilled. And thanks to a cell phone, Elsie, the cleaning lady has that moment.

Shortly then, the film is about a reticent cleaning lady, who happens to fall in love with a pretty cool student girl and their love seems to be impossible to be fulfilled, yet, for a moment their fates collide. It will be screened at the BUSHO Festival in the beginning of September the next time it can be seen in Hungary.

Previously, the only Hungarian success was achieved by the diploma film Once Upon a Time (Egyszer volt, hol nem volt) by Zsuzsa Böszörményi, in 1991; and later in 1994 there was also another Hungarian nomination, though, it did not win. Ever since then, this year is the first time a film from Hungary is nominated for a Student Award.

Photo: facebook.com/beautifulfigureshortfilm

Copy editor: bm

Source: index.hu, oscars.org