The Hungarian Dressmaker, Slovakia’s official submission to the Academy Awards for best international feature film, is more apt than ever, says its director and writer, Iveta Grofova.
Through interpretation by translator Jakub Tlolka, the filmmaker shares her insight into spotlighting a specific part of political history with the World War II drama, which screened in Karlovy Vary Film Festival’s main Crystal Globe competition and stars Alexandra Borbely. “I found it very important to highlight the subject again,” Grofova says during a recent THR Presents panel, powered by Vision Media. Marika (Borbely), a Hungarian widow dressmaker, shelters a Jewish boy in her home on the Slovak-Hungarian border. Adapted from Peter Kristufek’s book Emma and the Death’s Head, the movie takes place during the turbulent years of the Nazi-aligned Slovak state, forcing Slovakians to confront a dark era of their past that many, Grofova says, would prefer to forget.
“It’s becoming more current at present development, the most salient commonality between the World War II era and the present is labelling minorities as the evildoers responsible for our perceived or real injustices and grievances,” Grofova continues. “Slovaks are rather reluctant to face up to that period of their country’s history, insofar as it does not necessarily correspond to the positive image, that self-image that they might wish to construct themselves.”
Producer Zuzana Mistrikova concurs. She adds that the story demonstrates what the gradual spread of ideologically motivated hatred in a society does to that society — which is becoming increasingly topical in today’s global political climate. “It is true that over the past few months, we have been confronted with increasingly rabid rhetoric on the part of politicians who have found out that they can really exploit the fact that a lot of people are feeling threatened,” she says. “And this is why we believe that the film is important.”
What kind of audience is there for a film like The Hungarian Dressmaker in 2024? Mistrikova says: “When we started working on the film, we were looking to keep alive the events depicted therein, because we found them important. And it was only when the film was released that we realized how current it had become. … Of course, the target audience for the film is related to the cinematic language that the film employs. So there is a correspondence between one and the other.”
But Grofova sees an appeal for all of humanity when the movie is stripped back to its values. “I frequently discussed the motif of the protagonist being faced with mortal danger. Despite the fact that she’s faced with this mortal danger, she is capable of mustering certain values of common humanity, and she acts in in correspondence with them,” she says. “The sense of threat that we’re confronted with today mostly has to do with our comfort, and yet we are often unable to muster that courage and spiritual strength that the character does in the film.”
Borbely is flanked by an ensemble of Milan Ondrík, Nico Klimek and Alexander E. Fennon. Grofova’s star puts in a performance worthy of recognition, who manages a tall ask: “I wanted to tell the story of a woman who wants to be invisible, but cannot be invisible, and that’s a very difficult task for the actor,” the director admits. “I believe that Alexandra has managed that very successfully.”
This edition of THR Presents is sponsored by REASON8 Films.
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