TESTRŐL ÉS LÉLEKRŐL
Hungary

What if one day you met someone who, at night, dreams the same dream you do? Try and imagine... Would you be thrilled? Would you be scared? Would find it funny? Or rather intrusive? Or, perhaps, romantic? But what if you are not the romantic type at all? If you shudder at the thought of esoteric crap? What if you have problems dealing with your own emotions. How would you face this stranger next day after your shared, tender dreams of the night before? Would you attempt to create the same intimacy and affection you share in your dreams during the day? How is it possible that at night, several kilometres apart, while both of you sleep in lonely beds, you can become one in soul and body, but during the day, facing each other in your flesh and blood reality, you are unable to properly get through even a measly first date? And what if even the second date was a catastrophe? And the third was especially disgraceful? Would you give up? And if you gave up, could you stand it? Could you bear knowing that the person who is your soul mate at night and whose body so naturally caresses yours, remains a stranger to you during the day? Wouldn’t you just die?
A contemporary tale about the pain and beauty of our existence. Endre, the director of a modern, decent, EU-conform slaughterhouse and Maria, the new quality inspector sent by the controlling authorities can’t stand each other. One day, by pure chance, they learn that they just had the exact same dream the night before. Both of them are embarrassed by this discovery. The following day, they check: once again, they had the same dream. As they continue to compare dreams day after day, suspicious and astounded, it becomes clear that they meet each night in a common realm. This other world is peaceful and harmonious: a snowy forest, where Endre and Maria are graceful deer who gently love each other. They cannot ignore the intimacy they share so effortlessly in their dreams. Hesitantly, they try to recreate it in their every-day, flesh and blood existence. It proves to be harder than they guessed. After struggles, failed attempts, insults and tensions, the result is humiliating disappointment. But just when they are about to give up, passion breaks down the wall raised by awkwardness, and these two people, who are so evidently not fit for love, find each other. From that day on, they step as lightly and gracefully beside each other in their waking hours as their dream-world alter-egos do among the trees of the forest.

Written & directed by: Ildikó Enyedi
Produced by: Mónika Mécs, András Muhi, Ernö Mesterházy, Irma Ascher
Cinematography: Máté Herbai
Editing: Károly Szalai
Production Design: Imola Láng
Animation: Béla Klingl
Costume Design: Judit Sinkovits
Make-Up: Orsolya Petrilla
Sound: Péter Benjámin Lukács
Original Score: Adam Balazs
Cast: Alexandra Borbély, Géza Morcsányi

Director’s Statement:
The unfolding of the romance makes up the spine of the story. The background for it is our everyday world. We think we know it well. Home life, the city, the workplace, free time: the stages of our daily routine performance. As Endre and Maria slog through it, we get conscious of the complex obstacle course, which is so familiar to us, we don’t even notice it any more.
We show this world from a different point of view: not as we learned to interpret it during the long years of our social education, but as we live it in reality. Details are enlarged, distances expand or contract, and time does not pass at its standard, martial, centrally regulated pace, we experience the unique time of our heroes. We do not pass over anything. Nothing is self-evident. This city, the location of our story, becomes a defined, hyper-realist, feverish dream-world. Each moment makes us feel that survival on this landscape is tricky, and carelessness results in immediate punishment or humiliation.
And what about dreams? Endre’s and Maria’s common world of dreams is airy, natural, and bursting with free-flowing emotions. Trees, snow, wind. They are gentle and passionate simultaneously. It is a place where we can recognize ourselves.

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