One Day 2018

One Day | Egy Nap

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A clash between every day, the unbearably monotonous and the fragile and unique.

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About the One Day 💬

A mother of three, Anna Lipták (Zsófia Szamosi) is constantly running around - from work to the nursery, to school, to ballet, to fencing class. She is always in a rush. As if this wasn't enough. 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 is losing him. And she feels she can't always evade what comes next. Her issues are hardly unique, but she has simply no time to stop and think them through. They build up relentlessly, threatening to crush her. Carrying on takes more energy than she has left. This soul abrading cacophonic and devouring routine comes to a halt when she learns that her husband has cheated on her with her best friend. Will she be able to save what's fragile and unique in her life?

ONE DAY is the feature debut of Zsófia Szilágyi who worked as director Ildikó Enyedi's assistant on On Body and Soul.

• DIRECTOR'S NOTE

When her kids were little, a friend of mine described her typical day for me. She broke it down into ten-minute segments. It was surprising to see what it takes to be a mother on such a detailed timetable. It was also surprising to see how hard it was, but the most surprising was how little clue I had about how hard it was. It was as if the burdens of being a mother were a secret or a taboo. I tried to understand what made her description of her typical day so heart-wrenching.

I have often seen mothers stress over trying to do everything perfectly or at least trying to finish everything they started. On top of that, they seem to suffer from a guilty conscience all the time. It's a race against the clock. They can't fulfill everybody's different needs, so someone invariably ends up getting the short end of the deal. Most of the time the mothers are that someone. For want of a better solution, they put their own needs on hold for years or even decades. Motherhood seems to bring about a sense of how finite our options are.

Anna, the film's protagonist takes care of things: she fulfills the others' demands, she tries to balance and prioritize the different expectations. The matters to take care of are different: sometimes they are funny, sometimes stressful, sometimes surprising or even beautiful. Anna carries on with her day, as these small matters fill her days. She reacts to them, for they demand a reaction, and she has but a few stolen moments to digest or to look out a window or to let go of her composure for a beat when no one can see her. For years now she's been under the impression that she has but very little time for herself.

Slowly and consistently, the film shows - from her viewpoint - how Anna's day marches on. It is this very perspective and the handling of time that make up the film's core. We do not elegantly pass by certain repetitive actions and we do not change our perspective either. We go through them, just like she has to. Neither she nor we can avoid them. The film tells about everyday time and the forceful nature of routine.

There is something absolutely common and yet incredibly ruthless (and how can it be so ruthless and yet so common) about someone - and not only mothers or women - having to take care of things, fulfill demands, solve problems and remember chores all day for years on end. To have no chance of doing something for yourself and after a while not even knowing what that something might be. When the maximum time allowed for just sitting around quietly and not thinking of your next chore is ten minutes a day. This is the sum of your options to free yourself from the constraints of your duties and good manners. We let our lives pass us by without much drama as if it were just the morning train.

The biggest challenge for me was putting the family together. I wanted a real family, whatever that may mean. I remember the moment clearly when at the end of a very long casting process we finally had our family. I thought all you have to do now is shoot the film. It can't be that hard.

During shooting we had the chance to share in the struggles of our protagonist: when it came to time, each time counted, when it came to money, so did each penny. We couldn't afford any delays, the children couldn't afford to get sick, we couldn't afford rain... An extremely modest budget meant a proportionally large number of shooting days, which required real teamwork and a lot of creativity, including from the team not traditionally regarded as the creatives.

Zsófia Szilágyi

One Day Movie Details 🎥

Directed by

Zsófia Szilágyi

Writing Credits

Zsófia Szilágyi

Réka Mán-Várhegyi

Cast

Zsófia Szamosi

Leó Füredi

Annamária Láng

Ambrus Barcza

Zorka Varga-Blaskó

Márk Gárdos

Éva Vándor

Károly Hajduk

Music by

Máté Balogh

Cinematography by

Balázs Domokos

Category: EFA, European Film Award Nominee

Genre: Drama

Country: Hungary

One Day Official Trailer

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