Luca Tóth’s graduation short, The Age of Curious, premiered at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival in 2014 and won the Jury Distinction, and her first independent animation, the satirical Superbia, debuted at the Critics’ Week in Cannes in 2016. Now, her second film Mr. Mare has been selected into the Berlinale Shorts. What an amazing run for such a young director! In her new film a young man’s chest x-ray detects the silhouette of a tiny person whose head is protruded as a tumour from the patient’s ribs. Who is this little creature and what kind of change will he bring after he is born from the man’s body?

This year is even more exciting for the Hungarian animation industry due to another entry into the Berlinale Shorts: the personal and futuristic graduation film Entropia by Flóra Anna Buda is also competing for the Golden Bear. Read our interview with Flóra here.

What did you do when you received the letter that Mr. Mare had been selected into the Berlinale Shorts?

I was in the cinema with my cousin and the movie was just about to start. I read the email then quickly called Gábor Osváth and Péter Benjámin Lukács [the producer and the sound designer - ed.] to tell them to check their inboxes. Then I watched the movie in total happiness.

How does it feel to have your first film premiered in Cannes and your second animation debuted at the Berlinale?

It’s a real honour. If your first movie premieres at an A-list festival then you want a similar kind of attention for your second film, especially if you feel that you evolved in your art and you’d like this personal progress to not go unnoticed. That’s why this fills me with great euphoria, because it looks like my second film could reach a wider audience as well.

How did you come up with the idea of the film?

Not trying to be rude, but I was watching a terribly boring film about trains with Gábor Osváth. It was just so monotonous that my brain tuned out and I started to think of a duo of an everyday person and a small figure growing in his chest. I fantasised about this throughout the movie we were watching, and by the time the train marathon ended, it became clear to me that this story is a kind of symbol of infatuation. A sense of belonging that neither rational reason nor logic can break because you are always a little confident that the other person belongs to you. Basically that was the starting point that I unwrapped in the film.

Luca Tóth: Mr. Mare

If you show this through the relationship between two men, could we assume that this film connects with the LGBTQ theme as well, like Superbia did?

It addresses the topic, but my aim wasn’t to have a political discourse with it. Basically I think there is no need for a more specific reason to show gay love than a hetero relationship. Unlike some of my other works, I didn’t make this film with a social statement in mind. There were simply personal reasons for why I used male characters, one of which was that I wanted to place a distance between myself and the characters by making them different from me. If there isn’t any distance than they can often get too close, so much so that you can’t see their story clearly because you have become too biased. With this film my goal is not to make an unemotional film, but to avoid having any blind spots when it comes to the characters. I feel that I could keep a healthy distance from them, which also helped me to develop empathy for their conflicts. If the protagonist is an ageing, chubby old man who is in love with a younger guy, it’s easier for me to define this feeling and relationship in a film. The other reason was that there were little men and big women in Superbia, and I didn’t want to recreate a story like that simply because I don’t want to repeat myself.

What does Mr. Mare symbolise?

A person in love. I made up this voyeuristic, tiny character of Mr. Mare because I wanted to tell a one-sided love story. I wanted to show this from the perspective of a creature who doesn’t have the behavioural tools needed to be loved, he only knows how to love another person. So Mr. Mare is a creature who sees himself as tiny.

Luca Tóth: Mr. Mare

There is a duality in the character of Mr. Mare: although you portrayed him as an old man, he is a newborn who explores his environment.

Yes, you can witness how Mr. Mare’s character changes from the very beginning. He defines himself in this movie, and at the end he becomes a character in his own right. I like the absurdity associated with his character looking like the old gentlemen playing chess at Dagály, yet he is discovering the world around him with a childlike naivety.

There is a party scene in the movie with a sharp change of style. What was your aim with that?

This claustrophobic, meticulous, musty space where the two protagonists live is far away from the places outside. And Mr. Mare never sees what’s outside the place where they live. He defines himself in this place only and he understands his own character and everything that he learns in the film through this space. So everything else outside the apartment is characterised by a more subdued aesthetic, whether it is a party scene or just one of Mr. Mare’s fantasies.

Just like in Superbia, in Mr. Mare we see a man giving birth. How did you originally come up men giving birth?

I don’t know, it just turned out like that. Subconsciously. (Laughs)

Luca Tóth: Mr. Mare

In the couple’s everyday life a female figure shows up, one who is more dominant, just like in Superbia.

I like to visualise my characters as full people, even if they are just supporting characters or are hardly seen by the viewer. I think it happens many times in movies that the supporting actors aren’t given a character at all or it isn’t thought through enough. On the one hand my aim was for the viewer to somehow identify with this female character. On the other hand I wanted the girl’s character to be significantly different to Mr. Mare’s, which contrasts even more noticeably how Mr. Mare doesn’t suit the man.

What is the significance of the boy not seeing Mr. Mare but of the girl interacting with him?

I thought it would be nice that while Mr. Mare’s desire is to meet this young man and put him on a pedestal, he will never have a real relationship with him; Mr. Mare will always be part of his life as a voyeur only. However, Mr. Mare meets every other important character and is able to have some kind of connection with them. He wants to be in the girl’s position, and there is a moment when they face each other and she humiliates him without his realising it. This provided a good basis for why Mr. Mare changes his previous habits, why he leaves the apartment, and why he decides to quit the existing dynamic with the young man.

Luca Tóth: Mr. Mare

Men and women in your movies are very characteristic. Why do you like to draw figures that are not “heteronormative”?

I have the same reasons for the appearance of my characters as I said earlier, whereby I don’t think that there should be a particular reason to introduce heterosexual or homosexual love. Just because someone is considered more sexy based on our social encounters, they have no more right to be in a film than anyone else. I always find it absurd that most films tell stories about beautiful people. But it’s actually not easy for me to think in heteronormative figures because I feel that these flaws help me to better illustrate the characteristics and background of my protagonists.

So what’s next?

The festival circle of Mr. Mare has just started. It’s always very exciting to finally see a movie that you have worked so hard on. And making a movie always takes so much energy out of me that I can’t even think about making another one yet. So I don’t have a new project in mind, but I will teach at MOME, which I’m really excited about.

Zsófi Herczeg