The Hollywood Reporter's Lily Ford sat down with Director Iveta Grofova and Producer Zuzana Mistríková to discuss 'The Hungarian Dressmaker' in a THR Q&A powered by Vision Media.
00:00Hello and welcome to THR Presents. I am Lily Ford, THR's UK reporter, and today I'm joined
00:10by the filmmakers behind The Hungarian Dressmaker, which is Slovakia's official submission to the
00:14Academy Awards for Best International Feature Film. I'm joined by Susanna Mischukova, the
00:19producer, and Iveta Grifova, the writer and director of this film. So welcome both of you
00:24and thank you so much for speaking to me. I suppose, jumping straight into it, this is an
00:29area of World War II history that isn't often spotlighted in film, and I wonder just sort of
00:36how important you felt it was, Iveta, to shine a light on what a lot of people might not know
00:43happened in that area of the world in the 1940s. Besides the fact that the film is based on a book
00:52that's very popular in Slovakia, I found it very important to highlight the subject again,
00:59insofar as it's becoming more current at present.
01:02The most salient commonality between the World War II era and the present is labeling minorities as the
01:20evil doers responsible for our perceived or real injustices and grievances,
01:27and I found it very important to highlight that particular aspect of it.
01:31And forgive me because I haven't read the book, but I wonder how Iveta found balancing sort of that adaptation
01:39aspect of things and what what she felt was important to reflect directly from the book and what she took her own
01:46sort of creative freedom with.
01:50It's always difficult to when adapting a book into a film to know how much or to what extent you should be
01:59faithful to the original and to what extent you should rely on your own authorial input, so to speak.
02:04So what I did apart from reading the book was to do a lot of my own research and incorporate many stories,
02:11authentic historical stories, into the film that originally were not in the book.
02:21I wonder, just quickly then, as you were speaking about Iveta, what did you adapt from, or what did you not adapt from the book, sorry, but rather, you know, decided to do yourself and wasn't based off the text?
02:37So the main element is the broader societal and historical context of the story, insofar as that's not part of the book.
02:47The book is more of a chamber, intimate story.
02:50And the reason I did this was Slovaks are rather reluctant to face up to that period of their country's history,
03:00as far as it does not necessarily correspond to the positive image, that self-image that they might wish to construct themselves.
03:13And a question for you, Susanna, then. What, as a producer, what attracted you to this project?
03:19One of the most important elements for me is that the events depicted in the film
03:30presented a drastic change to the history of the city I live in, which is the Slovak capital Bratislava.
03:36Prior to the Second World War, Bratislava had been a multicultural city, a crossroads of religions and a variety of influences.
03:44And after the end of the war, it never went back to that.
03:53I suppose the story demonstrates what the gradual
03:59spread, the gradual percolation of hatred and ideologically motivated hatred into a society does to
04:09that. Well, I was going to ask, I mean, as Iveta said, you know, this is sort of a side of history
04:16that a lot of people would like to forget. And I wonder, Susanna, if you could maybe speak a little bit
04:23about the audience that you think there is for a film like The Hungarian Dressmaker.
04:28When we started working on the film, we were looking to keep alive the events
04:39depicted therein because we found them important and it was only when the film was released that we
04:47that we realized how current it had become in the meantime.
04:50In Slovakia, we were confronted with a kind of political rhetoric that's painfully, horrifyingly,
05:04redolent of that that was widespread in the era of the Slovak state.
05:10And it pains me to admit that this rhetoric is not circumscribed to Slovakia, that it is in fact
05:27rather widespread in other countries, including the most powerful countries in the world.
05:31Of course, the target audience for the film is related to the to the cinematic language that the film
05:46employs. So there is there is a correspondence between one and the other. The target audience is
05:53rather specific. I suppose I do sort of want to ask about maybe the current political moment and just for
06:00Iveta or Susanna if they have anything they want to say in terms of, you know,
06:07just sort of what we what we're seeing. I think Iveta mentioned, you know, this is something that
06:12becomes this is a sort of theme and a sort of genre of filmmaking that becomes really, really topical
06:18actually today. And I wondered if they if either of them would like to speak a little bit more to that.
06:25I was working on the script when I was writing the script. Obviously, the sociopolitical developments
06:39that surrounded the that that surrounded us did have an impact on on on on the way I treated the act of
06:46writing. So that the violence that was beginning to appear in society and it did not have to be physical
06:51violence to be rhetorical necessarily necessarily had influence the people that the way people the ways
07:00people behave and and and that's something that that that that affects you as a as a screenwriter as a
07:08as an author as a filmmaker as an author working on the film um if I frequently discussed the motif of the
07:23protagonists being faced with a mortal danger. Despite the fact that she's faced with this mortal danger she is
07:35capable of mustering certain values of of of common humanity um and she acts in in correspondence with
07:42them. The danger of sense of threat that we're confronted with today mostly has to do with our
07:53with our comfort and yet we are often unable to muster that courage and spiritual strength that that that
08:02the character does in the film.
08:05Although it is true that over the past few months we have been confronted with um increasingly uh
08:17rabid rhetoric on the part of politicians who have found out that they can really um exploit the fact
08:25that a lot of people are feeling threatened and this is why we why we believe that the film is important.
08:32I want to ask about Alexandra's performance quickly because it would you know be um terrible to
08:39overlook just sort of what a painstaking and and emotional and and also really subtle um performance
08:46that that that that she puts in. I wonder Yvette maybe if you could um talk about working with Alexandra
08:54and how she embodied exactly what you were looking for.
08:57I thought that Alexandra would be a good fit for the character of Marika after seeing the film
09:05on body and soul um which um showed me that that that that she could that she could deliver a very
09:13subtle and minimalist performance. I wanted to tell the story of an every woman uh who wants to be
09:20invisible but cannot be invisible and that's a very difficult task uh for for the actor for the actress.
09:29Yes um um so the the challenge is to be invisible but at the same time to engage
09:36the audience and um I believe that Alexandra has managed that very successfully.
09:41Well I completely agree I thought she was absolutely fantastic and you mentioned you know as a
09:48approaching it from a sort of female perspective Susanna I wonder if you could
09:52maybe speak to the significance of of a woman directing this film.
09:55As Iveta has said um the book that the film is based on has a rather different narrative perspective.
10:07Original protagonist of the book is a young boy uh when I began to think about whom to engage in
10:14the production of this film I I thought that Iveta would be a good fit as far as she had already directed the
10:20film she's a harbour which also stars uh child actors and that that she has a very unique voice as as uh as a director and that's uh
10:30what gave me the confidence that that she would be she would be a good choice um insofar as um um
10:39deliver that a woman's perspective into the making of the film and make it interesting and engaging.
10:45That was great thank you so much for your time and thank you so much for joining us here on THR Presents.
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