- Occupation
Producer, Director - Country
Hungary
Muhi András
Mr. Steel Axe - Entering Heaven
Gansükh (Mr. Steel Axe) is a shepherd, living in a northern Mongolian valley in the summer and as a shaman in Ulanbator in the winter. He decided to run for office at the parliamentary elections to be held in spring 2008. The story of the film concentrates on his everyday life in the yurt with his family and also shows his social and political activities. As a personal journey, we will follow him during the electoral campaign of the 2008 parliamentary elections and the course of the election in the rural district. The question is whether individual courage and the ruse of the proverbial poor lad can accomplish the mission of Gansükh to fetch a future for his people and a name and reputation for himself in 21st century Mongolia.
Bahrtalo! Good Luck!
How to hit the Jackpot? This question is not a simple one to answer for anybody. But it's even harder to solve for the two friends in this neo-realistic comedy: the "big hat" Gypsy and his Hungarian buddy - both of them Transylvanians. Many times they don't succeed, but when they do, their success doesn't last long. Yet they know something not a lot of us know: how to enjoy life. A road movie about two Transylvanian friends, Lali and Lori, who will stop at nothing to make it big. Director Róbert Lakatos follows the two men on a hilarious and pointless trip to Austria, and later when they end up in Egypt to sell a German Shepherd. The charismatic Lali negotiates on everything, even stuff that's nailed down, revealing his Eastern European bravura but also his flair. No setback will deter him, no matter how big. When the men finally have their finances in order, they quickly lose all their money on senseless knickknacks. Lakatos sets up the situations, but the men play themselves. Clad in an enormous moustache and hat, Lali doesn't take the slightest notice of the ways of the world and always manages to talk his way in. From a Viennese flea market to the foot of the pyramids, Lali might drive Lori crazy, but the friendship between the two men remains intact. Lakatos illustrates the differences between East and West in a relaxed and playful manner. His camera documents the events without interruptions, as if they were scenes from a feature film.
Common Deities
Santería for many people is like voodoo, its exotic rites capture the imagination. This religion is a strange mixture of the ancient gods worshipped by the slaves brought from Africa and the Catholic saints of the Spanish conquerors. Regardless of their social status, the majority of Cubans practice this Afro-Cuban religion. The film gives an inside view of this mystical world and shows how much it has become a part of everyday life.
Hunfootball - The 91st Minute
In the 91. minute, the adult league loses the World Cup qualification match to Sweden, as they have so many times in the past 20 years. Everything must be started over. Not long after this painful event the film follows the Hungarian European cup youth qualification tour in Sweden. Young Hungarian warriors in sweatpants try their luck in the "football cultured" part of Europe. Training, flirting, fighting, learning, matches, goals, pep talk at half-time - they have a hard time beating even their no-name challengers. A film about the future of Hungarian football.
The Light of Our Eye
Kati and Gy?z? are like average people, but their situation is not, because they - as a blind couple - have a baby. Ferike, their two-year-old son is healthy. From the time of his birth we spent whole weeks with the family… the camera documenting the time spent with them. The film is a collection of unexpected and unrepeatable moments.
A Village Romance (Lesbian Love)
The village was once settled by a community of lesbians seeking refuge from the city. Only a few families have remained. One of them lives in poverty but in a valuable house. The mistress of the house falls in love with her unfortunate gypsy neighbor lady M. Despite the fact that M is heterosexual, alcoholic, beaten regularly by her husband, threatened to have her children taken from her, and scorned by the villagers because of her gypsy descent, she reciprocates her neighbor's affection. "No one's ever loved me for who I am," she says. She can hardly wait for her husband to leave so she can take her three children and move in with the woman she loves.
The Wagon
The film adapts the most horrible thing of the Holocaust: the delivery of the deported people to the lagers, the days spent in the wagon. In the documentaries, books, interwiews of the last fifty year next to the fact of the „travelling" there are remarkably less of concrete fact. Nobody knows - except the involved ones - what happened beetween the fully humiliated humans on that two or three days next to the terrible circumstances wich were forced to them.
Waxworks
The pigs gobble everything up, be it a hen, an egg, a man or odds and ends. But everything can be saved, and that's exactly what stove-setter Gábor Petrohai does. He puts a lot of energy collecting all these old instruments, worn furniture, broken stove tiles and all kinds of bric a brac that have seen better days.Mister Petrohai's yard is flooded with all this junk, the pigs can barely fit into their sty. As the junk is gradually turning into museum pieces, our real figures become part of the fiction.
Mathias, Mathias
„King Matthias died in Vienna around the end of October in 1490. He was poisoned. One evening he ate some figs. He was already very ill during the night, and in the morning... he was dead." A 13-minute animation documentary about the residents of Kolozsvár: how much do they know about the famous sovereign, King Matthias, who was born in their city? „And the only other thing I can say about him is that there is a statue of King Matthias sitting on a horse here. That's it. What else is there to say?"
Hungarian ID
I have only travelled to Transylvania once and that was only passing through (on the way to the Bulgarian Black Sea!). This in itself is sufficient to cause a certain degree of embarrassment, though what really disturbed me in recent years was that my relationship to one of the then hottest issues in internal politics, namely the Status Act, and the related issue of the so-called Hungarian Card, was rather unclear. Since then the issue has nearly become the measure of our national identity, so it was time for me to draw attention to it. In the summer of 2002 I spent two weeks in Transylvania along with two colleagues and a camera, in order to look into the affair, and we condensed our 20-hour footage into 64 minutes of material. If nothing else came out of the trip one thing at least is sure: I can no longer be so easily flustered! I see people who I have already got to know, who have in the process become like any other acquaintance, and about whom, after this, I am able to think with as much certainty and calmness as I please. The word buletin means identification card and report in the Romanian language.
A Place to Win
This documentary is an experiment on ways to reconstruct living spaces inhabited only by winners though the genesis of lottery houses. How can the past speak through a building and how many threads there are still connecting it to the history of its early days, while another 50 years have imposed other events on top of those? There is one thing in common for all the people recounting their stories in the film: all of them have won condominiums as a prize in a very popular lottery between 1958 and 1968.
Gansükh (Mr. Steel Axe) is a shepherd, living in a northern Mongolian valley in the summer and as a shaman in Ulanbator in the winter. He decided to run for office at the parliamentary elections to be held in spring 2008. The story of the film concentrates on his everyday life in the yurt with his family and also shows his social and political activities. As a personal journey, we will follow him during the electoral campaign of the 2008 parliamentary elections and the course of the election in the rural district. The question is whether individual courage and the ruse of the proverbial poor lad can accomplish the mission of Gansükh to fetch a future for his people and a name and reputation for himself in 21st century Mongolia.
Bahrtalo! Good Luck!
How to hit the Jackpot? This question is not a simple one to answer for anybody. But it's even harder to solve for the two friends in this neo-realistic comedy: the "big hat" Gypsy and his Hungarian buddy - both of them Transylvanians. Many times they don't succeed, but when they do, their success doesn't last long. Yet they know something not a lot of us know: how to enjoy life. A road movie about two Transylvanian friends, Lali and Lori, who will stop at nothing to make it big. Director Róbert Lakatos follows the two men on a hilarious and pointless trip to Austria, and later when they end up in Egypt to sell a German Shepherd. The charismatic Lali negotiates on everything, even stuff that's nailed down, revealing his Eastern European bravura but also his flair. No setback will deter him, no matter how big. When the men finally have their finances in order, they quickly lose all their money on senseless knickknacks. Lakatos sets up the situations, but the men play themselves. Clad in an enormous moustache and hat, Lali doesn't take the slightest notice of the ways of the world and always manages to talk his way in. From a Viennese flea market to the foot of the pyramids, Lali might drive Lori crazy, but the friendship between the two men remains intact. Lakatos illustrates the differences between East and West in a relaxed and playful manner. His camera documents the events without interruptions, as if they were scenes from a feature film.
Common Deities
Santería for many people is like voodoo, its exotic rites capture the imagination. This religion is a strange mixture of the ancient gods worshipped by the slaves brought from Africa and the Catholic saints of the Spanish conquerors. Regardless of their social status, the majority of Cubans practice this Afro-Cuban religion. The film gives an inside view of this mystical world and shows how much it has become a part of everyday life.
Hunfootball - The 91st Minute
In the 91. minute, the adult league loses the World Cup qualification match to Sweden, as they have so many times in the past 20 years. Everything must be started over. Not long after this painful event the film follows the Hungarian European cup youth qualification tour in Sweden. Young Hungarian warriors in sweatpants try their luck in the "football cultured" part of Europe. Training, flirting, fighting, learning, matches, goals, pep talk at half-time - they have a hard time beating even their no-name challengers. A film about the future of Hungarian football.
The Light of Our Eye
Kati and Gy?z? are like average people, but their situation is not, because they - as a blind couple - have a baby. Ferike, their two-year-old son is healthy. From the time of his birth we spent whole weeks with the family… the camera documenting the time spent with them. The film is a collection of unexpected and unrepeatable moments.
A Village Romance (Lesbian Love)
The village was once settled by a community of lesbians seeking refuge from the city. Only a few families have remained. One of them lives in poverty but in a valuable house. The mistress of the house falls in love with her unfortunate gypsy neighbor lady M. Despite the fact that M is heterosexual, alcoholic, beaten regularly by her husband, threatened to have her children taken from her, and scorned by the villagers because of her gypsy descent, she reciprocates her neighbor's affection. "No one's ever loved me for who I am," she says. She can hardly wait for her husband to leave so she can take her three children and move in with the woman she loves.
The Wagon
The film adapts the most horrible thing of the Holocaust: the delivery of the deported people to the lagers, the days spent in the wagon. In the documentaries, books, interwiews of the last fifty year next to the fact of the „travelling" there are remarkably less of concrete fact. Nobody knows - except the involved ones - what happened beetween the fully humiliated humans on that two or three days next to the terrible circumstances wich were forced to them.
Waxworks
The pigs gobble everything up, be it a hen, an egg, a man or odds and ends. But everything can be saved, and that's exactly what stove-setter Gábor Petrohai does. He puts a lot of energy collecting all these old instruments, worn furniture, broken stove tiles and all kinds of bric a brac that have seen better days.Mister Petrohai's yard is flooded with all this junk, the pigs can barely fit into their sty. As the junk is gradually turning into museum pieces, our real figures become part of the fiction.
Mathias, Mathias
„King Matthias died in Vienna around the end of October in 1490. He was poisoned. One evening he ate some figs. He was already very ill during the night, and in the morning... he was dead." A 13-minute animation documentary about the residents of Kolozsvár: how much do they know about the famous sovereign, King Matthias, who was born in their city? „And the only other thing I can say about him is that there is a statue of King Matthias sitting on a horse here. That's it. What else is there to say?"
Hungarian ID
I have only travelled to Transylvania once and that was only passing through (on the way to the Bulgarian Black Sea!). This in itself is sufficient to cause a certain degree of embarrassment, though what really disturbed me in recent years was that my relationship to one of the then hottest issues in internal politics, namely the Status Act, and the related issue of the so-called Hungarian Card, was rather unclear. Since then the issue has nearly become the measure of our national identity, so it was time for me to draw attention to it. In the summer of 2002 I spent two weeks in Transylvania along with two colleagues and a camera, in order to look into the affair, and we condensed our 20-hour footage into 64 minutes of material. If nothing else came out of the trip one thing at least is sure: I can no longer be so easily flustered! I see people who I have already got to know, who have in the process become like any other acquaintance, and about whom, after this, I am able to think with as much certainty and calmness as I please. The word buletin means identification card and report in the Romanian language.
A Place to Win
This documentary is an experiment on ways to reconstruct living spaces inhabited only by winners though the genesis of lottery houses. How can the past speak through a building and how many threads there are still connecting it to the history of its early days, while another 50 years have imposed other events on top of those? There is one thing in common for all the people recounting their stories in the film: all of them have won condominiums as a prize in a very popular lottery between 1958 and 1968.
Mirrorland
Our creative documentary follows the self-recognition and the first encounters with the outside world of four children: Alicia is seven years old, lives in traditionally Catholic, yet lately rather Bohemian Spain, while Jake lives in London, he is five years old and there is no secret about his family - it is almost trendy to have two mothers in London…The situation of the Hungarian protagonists is completely different though: children born in lesbian relationship are younger, their parents and families face the challenges of being "the first, the pioneers" in a post communist society lacking understanding and openness toward them.There are 9 lesbian couples currently living in Hungary who decided to have a baby despite prejudices, open discrimination and predominantly conservative attitudes towards family roles in Hungary. One of the young mothers who gave birth to Lujzi (15 months), Eszter, is a photographer, who decided to launch a mailing list for these couples: she wants to help the others, and let information flow among them – knowing that all of them have just been over the difficult phase of getting pregnant, giving birth in an indifferent, sometimes even intolerant atmosphere. They are united by the anxious experience of being the 'first', but also by simply being young mothers of small children aged 1 to 3. They try to rediscover a new rhythm of life: spending time at home with their babies and in the same time trying to keep up with their work and their previous life (often as activist lesbians). Eszter’s other aim when she set up their informal network was to convince the girls to participate in her art project: every year she gets the nine families together in a studio and takes one picture of each family, a beautiful, nicely lit, 'family photo’ like in « good old times ». But unlike those traditional family portraits hung up in cosy living rooms for all to see, these photographs cannot be seen by us, the outsiders: we don't have access to these wonderful art objects because families are afraid. They agreed to participate in this photo project only by making Eszter promise that these photos will be private for the following fifteen-twenty years. These brave mothers try to be just mothers, though they are at all times aware that (through this simple, natural gesture) they make history. One of the mothers put it straight-forwardly: ‘I am happy to tell everyone that I am a lesbian, that I live in a lesbian partnership. I have been working as an advocate of lesbians all my life. But I cannot decide in the name of my daughter that she should become famous for being 'The Lesbian Child’.Mirrorland has a very sensitive starting point: it aims at capturing a universal topic: how little children first get out of the "caul", how they accommodate with other people for the first time after being nurtured by their parents during the first months/years of their life. Going to nursery or kindergarten they come to face other children and adults on regular basis, people coming from different circumstances, with different family models. We, as adults, would give anything if only we could recall those first moments of encounter with society at large, well-buried in our subconsciousness. It is a daunting moment for children and parents alike.But due to the fact that - at least in Hungary - lesbian mothers are scared of the aggressive response of the majority society, the filmmakers have to find a way to tell this story and in the same time protect their protagonists.
Indian Wife
The film, a docu-fiction comedy has Lali, a Transylvanian (Romania) Gabor Gipsy looking for a wife for his son Boby. As he cannot find a proper woman within his community, he decides to get one from India, the original homeland of the European Gypsies. The Gabor Gypsies of Transylvania form a very traditional community, distinguishing themselves not only through their appearance – men wearing big hats and moustaches, women wearing large, colored skirts and kerchiefs – but also through their deeply respected traditions, such as the youth getting married at a very young age (girls at 12–14, boys at 14–16), and marriages being arranged by their parents, just like in India. Lali is desperate as he cannot find an appropriate wife for his 16 year old son amongst the Gabor Gypsies. The community is very small (approx. 30.000 people) and most of the girls suitable in age for Boby (12–14 years old) come from families with status either too high or too low for Lali’s family status. And in case of the families able to present a bride of suitable age there is a massive fight going on around the amount of money the family has to pass along with the girl, over to the boy’s family. With all the fuss, Lali decides to travel to India with his son Boby and a Transylvanian Hungarian friend, Lóri, who is seriously thinking of establishing a touring agency dealing with travels to India. Lali may also sustain the idea of initiating a business in matrimonial planning between Indian and European Gypsies.
Our creative documentary follows the self-recognition and the first encounters with the outside world of four children: Alicia is seven years old, lives in traditionally Catholic, yet lately rather Bohemian Spain, while Jake lives in London, he is five years old and there is no secret about his family - it is almost trendy to have two mothers in London…The situation of the Hungarian protagonists is completely different though: children born in lesbian relationship are younger, their parents and families face the challenges of being "the first, the pioneers" in a post communist society lacking understanding and openness toward them.There are 9 lesbian couples currently living in Hungary who decided to have a baby despite prejudices, open discrimination and predominantly conservative attitudes towards family roles in Hungary. One of the young mothers who gave birth to Lujzi (15 months), Eszter, is a photographer, who decided to launch a mailing list for these couples: she wants to help the others, and let information flow among them – knowing that all of them have just been over the difficult phase of getting pregnant, giving birth in an indifferent, sometimes even intolerant atmosphere. They are united by the anxious experience of being the 'first', but also by simply being young mothers of small children aged 1 to 3. They try to rediscover a new rhythm of life: spending time at home with their babies and in the same time trying to keep up with their work and their previous life (often as activist lesbians). Eszter’s other aim when she set up their informal network was to convince the girls to participate in her art project: every year she gets the nine families together in a studio and takes one picture of each family, a beautiful, nicely lit, 'family photo’ like in « good old times ». But unlike those traditional family portraits hung up in cosy living rooms for all to see, these photographs cannot be seen by us, the outsiders: we don't have access to these wonderful art objects because families are afraid. They agreed to participate in this photo project only by making Eszter promise that these photos will be private for the following fifteen-twenty years. These brave mothers try to be just mothers, though they are at all times aware that (through this simple, natural gesture) they make history. One of the mothers put it straight-forwardly: ‘I am happy to tell everyone that I am a lesbian, that I live in a lesbian partnership. I have been working as an advocate of lesbians all my life. But I cannot decide in the name of my daughter that she should become famous for being 'The Lesbian Child’.Mirrorland has a very sensitive starting point: it aims at capturing a universal topic: how little children first get out of the "caul", how they accommodate with other people for the first time after being nurtured by their parents during the first months/years of their life. Going to nursery or kindergarten they come to face other children and adults on regular basis, people coming from different circumstances, with different family models. We, as adults, would give anything if only we could recall those first moments of encounter with society at large, well-buried in our subconsciousness. It is a daunting moment for children and parents alike.But due to the fact that - at least in Hungary - lesbian mothers are scared of the aggressive response of the majority society, the filmmakers have to find a way to tell this story and in the same time protect their protagonists.
Indian Wife
The film, a docu-fiction comedy has Lali, a Transylvanian (Romania) Gabor Gipsy looking for a wife for his son Boby. As he cannot find a proper woman within his community, he decides to get one from India, the original homeland of the European Gypsies. The Gabor Gypsies of Transylvania form a very traditional community, distinguishing themselves not only through their appearance – men wearing big hats and moustaches, women wearing large, colored skirts and kerchiefs – but also through their deeply respected traditions, such as the youth getting married at a very young age (girls at 12–14, boys at 14–16), and marriages being arranged by their parents, just like in India. Lali is desperate as he cannot find an appropriate wife for his 16 year old son amongst the Gabor Gypsies. The community is very small (approx. 30.000 people) and most of the girls suitable in age for Boby (12–14 years old) come from families with status either too high or too low for Lali’s family status. And in case of the families able to present a bride of suitable age there is a massive fight going on around the amount of money the family has to pass along with the girl, over to the boy’s family. With all the fuss, Lali decides to travel to India with his son Boby and a Transylvanian Hungarian friend, Lóri, who is seriously thinking of establishing a touring agency dealing with travels to India. Lali may also sustain the idea of initiating a business in matrimonial planning between Indian and European Gypsies.
Producer András Muhi received the Best Short Film Producer award at the 33th Hungarian Film Week in 2002, and he also won a Best Film Producer award at the 34th Hungarian Film Week in 2003 and at the 36th Hungarian Film Week in 2005. In 2005 was also awarded Béla Balázs Prize, the most dignified prize of Hungarian film artists. Member of the European Film Academy.
SELECTED FILMOGRAPHY: As ProducerWomb (2010) – by Benedek Fliegauf Locarno International Filmfestival Toronto International Filmfestival London FilmfestivalBahrtalo! – Good Luck! (2008) – by Rober Lakatos Karlovy Vary IFF 2008 – East of the West Section – Europa Cinemas Label PrizeMilky Way (2007) – by Benedek FliegaufAwards Barcelona l’Alternativa - Feature Film PrizeLocarno International Film Festival - Filmmakers of the Present Golden Leopard Prize Moscow TOMORROW - Special Prize of the Bloggrer’s Jury Mexico City FICCO – Special Mention38th Hungarian Film Week – Special Prize of the Jury; Best Cinematographer; Best SoundHerminafiled Apparition (2006) – by Peter HalaszSyracuse IFF 2007 – Best Experimental Film37th Hungarian Film Week – Best Experimental FilmJenjou IFF (Korea) 2006Birdsaviour, Clouds and Wind (2006) – by István SzaladjákShanghai IFF – Panorama 2006Lagów IFF 2006Rottertam IFF – Time and Tide section 2007Syracuse IFF 2007Green Film Festival, Seoul 2007Before Dawn (2005) – (short fiction) by Bálint KenyeresEuropean Film Academy Short Film 2006 – Prix UIPDealer (2003) – by Benedek Fliegauf
Inforg Studio
Kinizsi utca 11
H-1092 Budapest
Kinizsi utca 11
H-1092 Budapest
Docu Talents From the East 2006 - 2006
East Silver Caravan - 2008
Ex Oriente Babies - 2008