Róbert Koroknyai

BIOGRAPHIE

I started acting in films and theatre when I was a teenager. When I was in high school, I was told that I would not get through to the next year as my grades in 8 subjects were abysmal. I made a film with my friends. It was presented at a yearly school event, and my teachers decided to let me pass through to the next grade – apparently to encourage my dedication to at least one subject. Later, I wanted to try myself out on the other side of the camera so I worked in the grip department in a couple of movies. I wanted to continue as a grip for a while but American movies just started coming to Hungary and there was a need for production staff so that’s where I continued, and stayed for over 13 years, going up the production ladder. In fact, I still work as a production manager/producer. During my career, I was lucky to see and work not just in major Hollywood movies, but on small low budget art-house films and commercials as well. Except for the school one, this is my first film. WRITER/DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT Short Film CHARLIE (Hungary, 2019, 15’) First of all, thank you for watching my first movie. (Please note that the video file I sent is not final – we are still working on the film’s sound and color, and a short quote will be added to the beginning.) As Charlie makes clear, words are powerful. If we would just replace the name “Charlie” by such hate-filled buzzwords as migrant-Gypsy-Jew-Gay-Cuck etc., the story would at once become very familiar, we’d understand it in a second. But if we take the word out of the picture, if we take out the baggage it has been carrying for thousands of years, there is nothing left but the truth: this situation is completely absurd. Violence is absurd. The play on which the screenplay is based, and therefore the film, is an allegory for both the power and emptiness of the buzzwords used to incite hatred. If we take the words themselves out of the conversation, with all their baggage, all that remains are people who are willing and able to pull the trigger on others based on their ideological beliefs, people who are unable to do it, even to protect themselves, and those who, caught in the middle, become the victims of this turmoil. Mrozek, the author of the original play, had a crystal clear insight into the mechanisms of hatred and fear, and he created the play’s characters and symbols with a delighting subtleness and with almost surgical precision. Besides film, theater is my other passion. I started out as a child theater actor and only went into film production in my teens. I always knew that my first film would pay homage to theater. With Charlie, I wanted to start at the roots, build up a single scene, and focus on working with the amazing actors I persuaded to come do the film. My goal was to progressively build the story’s tension up working with three actors, one camera, in one single room. I wanted to start out from the most basic component of a movie: the scene. Adapting the original one-act play and directing Charlie was naturally full of challenges. Our hands were tied in so many ways. The story exists exclusively in the doctor’s closed world. It is in this closed world that, together with my DP and set designer, we had to find a way to visually balance the actual action and the latent symbolic meaning behind the scene. The challenge I most enjoyed tackling was to constantly keep floating at the limit where a real situation meets an allegory. And to do this without using any artistic tools of expression just for the sake of using them. Where is the limit between theater and film? Where do you draw the line between real and absurd? My DP, Gergő, and I had decided at an early stage that any tool and tricks we would use would grow organically out of the story itself. The story is what we would play with, and nothing else. The frequent changes in lighting, going from handheld to fixed camera and back, from close ups to wide shots and back – these are all justified by the unfolding drama of the story. Thank you for your attention. Best regards, Robert Koroknyai

FILMOGRAPHIE