Felvidek. Caught in between (English version)

In her documentary on Hungarian-Slovak relations, Vladislava Plančíková focuses on the word “felvidék”, which refers to the now non-existent northern part of Austro-Hungary. In a personal collage consisting of the stories of members of her Slovak-Hungarian family and of visual references to historical events, she follows the eventful and today often taboo history of the post-war fate of Hungarians on Slovak soil. The abstract topic grabs our interest not only through the witnesses’ testimony, but also by using thre novel technique of animating real objects, including a number of contemporary and modern photographs.

DETAIL:
“The word ‘Felvidék’ lives on today and evokes negative emotions, sometimes even fights. But for me it’s a magical place, a kind of Macondo, the place where I was born and raised. My home.”

EN:Felvidek: Caught in Between, an animated documentary, dusts up long-forgotten stories of people from a Central European region, whose lives were affected by the decisions of political leaders. After World War II, thousands of people from this region were forced to leave their homes. Memories come alive. “Felvidek” is a multiethnic Slovak/Hungarian region in southern Slovakia. Far too often the region has been trapped in between the opposing interests of political elites; far too often its people have been tossed around by the twists of history. In the 1940s, many of them were forced to leave their homeland. Felvidek: Caught in Between unravels the history which continues to be a soft spot for people whose fates were hit by the events after World War II. Some wounds are hard to heal, some questions remain unanswered but the future brings hope for reconciliation. When memories are not enough, the stories come to live through animation. The film combines oral history documentary, archive footage and animation. The narrative deals with a sensitive theme: the forced resettlement of ethnic Hungarians in postwar Czechoslovakia. CS:

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Mandala Pictures
Tomáš Kaminský
Mariánská 18
Stupava / 900 31 / Slovakia
tomas@mandalapictures.eu