This is the second time that a graduation film in animation from Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design in Budapest is selected into the short competition programme of Berlinale: in 2014, the satirical sketch Symphony no. 42 by Réka Bucsi was premiered, and this year the futuristic-surrealistic Entropia by Flóra Anna Buda is competing for the Golden Bear. In addition, Katalin Lovrity’s MOME graduation animated short, Volcano Island, was screened in the Generation Kplus programme in 2017. There is another Hungarian film in the competition programme this year: the animation short Mr. Mare, by Luca Tóth, is also a sensitive and promising piece to be premiered at the 69th edition of the festival.

Flóra Anna Buda’s short presents three parallel universes where three girls live in different circumstances. A fly flies over these separate universes and creates a bug in the system, whereby the girls are able to move towards each other, meet and melt in a peaceful idyll while the whole universe collapses around them.

How did the idea of the film come about?

The scene that takes place in the supermarket is almost exactly something that I saw in a dream. I think we were at a festival in Ljubljana where I saw the movie Is the Man Who is Tall Happy? by Michel Gondry, which really inspired me. In it was a scene presenting the hypothetical scenario of what would happen if a time machine went wrong and you would meet yourself. This thought stayed with me because parallel realities and the fact that people are constantly looking for themselves are concepts that really interest me. Then I started to delve further, asking myself who I am and how I could define myself; but I was unable to put that into a linear story, because I see it as being more complex than that. That’s how writing down the experiences I live in the most honest way came about, because I don’t think a person works on just one single level.

How did you separate the three threads, the three female characters?

I received a lot of help from the scriptwriter Zsófia Ruttkay and the head of the Masters programme at MOME Animation, Tibor Bánóczki. I worked on the script with Zsófi, and Tibor gave me really good advice about the visual development. First I thought about three different styles for the three characters, but the film is really just about one person, so I decided to unify the styles to help the viewer understand - at least at the end - that these three stories are in fact three aspects of the same woman.

What do the three different women symbolise?

One of them represents the animalistic side of human nature, another is a consumer fulfilled with her own frustrations, and the third lives in a futuristic room where she has to keep running to keep the system functional.

Flóra Anna Buda: Entropia

Now that the movie is finished, do you feel that you have managed to process this identity search?

It helped me a lot, and that was in fact my aim, because when I started to write the film, seeing myself and the people around me in a better light was exactly what I needed. It sounds lame, but it eventually helped me to become integrated into society and I realised that everyone struggles with similar issues.

At your graduation you mentioned that David Lynch inspired you (you also wrote your thesis about his work). How so?

When I started to write my thesis I had a different topic in mind. Later, when I was working on the animatic I listened to a lot of interviews with Lynch. I have loved his work for a long time now and I’m sure that what I have learned from him has been incorporated into my visual thinking. In an interview he explained that when someone is making a movie, there is them and there is also a wall, behind which is another person who knows how to make the film. Lynch believes filmmaking is when you break this wall and find yourself, i.e. the one who knows how to shoot a film. I liked that very much. Basically, I’m very interested in processing dreams, so I feel close to Lynch’s thinking in this respect.

The title Entropia is very catchy. How did you come up with it?

The original title was Vanities, but as the story unfolded it became less and less true to the movie. I was talking about the film with Nándor Bera (Candide, Trees) when he said that it is a very entropy piece. It grabbed me immediately. I delved further and further into this subject and the more I read about it, the more firmly I believed that “entropia” would be the perfect title. I was afraid that it would be too scientific, as I was told that many wouldn’t understand its meaning. But I think it suits this kind of cyclical, circular, passing and rebirth process.

Flóra Anna Buda: Entropia

The film has a very strong symbolic system, such as the flies, the larvae, the deer and the consumer society. What do they represent?

I think the deer is perhaps the most obvious of them all, as it represents a male-female relationship, a kind of dating method. For example, for the scene in the woods, I wanted to introduce the woman as a hunting creature, hunting the young deer. With the fly, I had larvae starting to hatch in a dead animal in my mind. I once had a dream of sitting in a bathtub with a huge larva pouring liquid soap into it. The whole dream had a kind of Miyazaki feel to it. I wanted this giant caterpillar to have some role in my movie. It seemed clear to me that if I wanted to present a cycle, then something must be done with larvae for them to work in all three parts, and the whole must have some logic. That's why the fly finally became the “storyteller” who is able to travel between the three worlds.

Who or what was inspired you besides Lynch? For example the surreal images that are reminiscent of the paintings by Magritte.

When I was a child, my parents took me to a lot of exhibitions, so many visual effects influenced me as a kid, especially Cézanne’s colour-mixing method. I am drawn to the make-believe, to mesmerising sketches, for example Escher’s portrayal of space. I’m mostly inspired by live-action films in the field of composition and editing. But we consume so much visual content on a daily basis that we are often unable to follow it all, and this is unwillingly or unintentionally integrated into our own thinking processes.

Flóra Buda Anna: Entropia

The rococo synthesiser music and noises of the film are futuristic, ominous and playful. How did you develop the sound world?

I was very lucky in that respect. For a long time I wanted Bach’s concerto in F minor to be the soundtrack to the film because I thought it would work really well with the natural pictures and the sci-fi element, but in hindsight I’m glad that I changed my mind. The final version was composed by Gergő Matos. I heard his music at a party, and as I was listening to one of his experimental electronic pieces it hit me that we should work together. I asked him if he would be interested in a collaboration and he was really excited about the idea, as it turned out he had already thought about trying his hand at film composition. I also trusted my instincts a bit because Gergő had never previously worked as a sound engineer for animated films.

What instructions did you give him?

At the commercial scene, I sent him a style description of what kind of genres to mix, including some specific examples. I collected several, but I also tried to give Gergő a lot of creative freedom because he had very good ideas which he bravely put into the movie.

What are you currently working on? Do you have a new project in mind?

I’m currently attending an international workshop called Animation Sans Frontières, and I started to write a new short in the summer. I worked on Entropia for two years, and after a year and a half I started to come up with new ideas, which I couldn’t put into this movie. So I started to write a new story. So far it’s just a treatment, but I have a bit of visual design as well.

Will this movie be more experimental?

This will be an experiment for me insofar as it will include dialogue. I would definitely like to add lines to the characters but I would also like to leave the narrative complex.

Zsófi Herczeg