This event was held virtually as a Zoom webinar and streamed via YouTube Live.
Registrants received a link to independently view the film prior to the live event.
The East Central European Center at the Harriman Institute presents its 2020-2021 film series: Contemporary Society and Its Discontents, a series of screenings and discussions of films from the past five years that comment on various aspects of contemporary life in East Central Europe. Join us for a virtual screening of the 2018 Hungarian film One Day (“Egy nap”) and a discussion with director Zsófia Szilágyi and producer Edina Kenesei joined in conversation by Professor Carol Rounds, moderated by Christopher W. Harwood and Aleksandar Bošković, co-directors of the East Central European Center.
SYNOPSIS. Anna is 40. She is always in a rush. She has three children, a husband, a job and financial stress. When it comes to money, each penny counts, when it comes to time, so does each minute. Anna meets deadlines, makes promises, takes care of things, brings stuff home and remembers everything. But she never catches up with her husband. She’d like to talk to him. She feels she must. She feels she is losing him. And she feels she can’t always evade what comes next. A clash between the everyday, the unbearably monotonous and the fragile and unique.
Zsófia Szilágyi graduated from the University of Pécs in 2002 with a degree for teaching Hungarian language and literature. She continued her education as a film and television director at the Academy of Film and Drama of Budapest from 2002 to 2007. During her studies, she was awarded a scholarship from the Leonardo Da Vinci Programme and studied production at Mediopolis Film- und Fernsehproduktion GmbH, Berlin in 2006. In the same year, she took part in “Heimat, Europa?” an audiovisual project initiated by the Kolleg für Management und Gestaltung nachhaltiger Entwicklung, where she was a scriptwriter and camera assistant.
From 2007 to 2009, Zsófia Szilágyi worked as an assistant to award-winning director Ildikó Enyedi at the Hungarian Academy of Film and Theater. In 2011, she was awarded a Scholarship from the Goethe Institute in Hamburg. In 2012, she directed If you can, a documentary supported by the European Integration Fund. She has worked on several short features and documentaries, and she served as assistant to director Ildikó Enyedi on the film On Body and Soul (Testről és lélekről, 2017), which won the Golden Bear at Berlin and was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. One Day (Egy nap, 2018) is her debut feature. It was awarded a FIPRESCI Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 2018.
Edina Kenesei worked for thirteen years as a theater producer before turning over a new leaf in 2014 to begin working in the film industry. One Day is the first feature film she has produced, and she has been very busy since then, producing short films, documentaries and feature films.
