Director: Tamás Yvan Topolánszky
Writers: Tamás Yvan Topolánszky, Zsuzsanna Bak, Ward Parry
Stars: Ferenc Lengyel, Evelin Dobos, Declan Hannigan, Scott Alexander Young, Nikolett Barabás, Lili Bordán
Country/Language: Hungary/English, Hungarian
Notable Festivals: Montreal World Film Festival
Synopsis: As America prepares to enter WW2, Hungarian film director Michael Curtiz grapples with political intervention and a dysfunctional relationship with his estranged daughter amid the troubled production of Casablanca in 1942.
Tamás Yvan Topolánszky is an award-winning filmmaker, writer, and media designer. During his career, he has written and directed several short films, commercials, animations, a documentary, and a feature film. He founded JUNO11 Pictures production house with his producer wife, Claudia Sümeghy.
In 2014 he made his first major creation, Bath – An American Urban Legend, which was nominated for the award at the Hungarian Independent Film Festival and at the Catalina Film Festival in Los Angeles. His most successful short film is Letter to God (2014). The distributional rights were picked up by HBO for Central-Eastern Europe after it won several prizes like the Los Angeles Short Film Festival and the New York Short Film Festival Best Film and Best Directing award.
His latest project and his first feature-length movie has been preparing for 4 years.
With CURTIZ they intend to bring the character of the most successful Hungarian director ever lived (Michael Curtiz), not just to the fans of Casablanca, and the Golden Era of Hollywood, but to wider audiences who look for an emotional and sophisticated historical drama.
