This film is worth watching if only because director Martha Mesaros at 86 makes a movie and does it shrillly, vividly and modernly. Over half a century of experience — twenty-seven scripts and sixty films. She lives in Hungary, speaks Russian, studied at VGIK. Living classic and our man! As a director and as a woman, she feels the drama of life. But it is not dramatic, her view is clear. Life for her is like a miracle, like the northern lights - it is and it is beautiful.
I was lucky to be when Marta Mesaros presented her film at the opening of the Hungarian Film Festival. It was an intimate, heartfelt conversation. We talked about the truth and how difficult it is to pull it out of history. About how this picture was born, in the beginning it was a non-fiction film and later, based on conversations, memories and documents, a script for a feature film happened. This topic is complex, they prefer to keep silent about it, but it is impossible to hide it - it breaks from the soul.
In this story, there is no intention to denounce or accuse anyone, dot all the i or reveal the next truth, as is often the case in male cinema. Here, the author simply offers the viewer to go along with the old woman Maria and her daughter Olga a long way into life. Through pain, resistance, reluctance to speak, slowly open the heart, let go of the heavy burden of years-old mystery to understand and embrace life with all its drama and northern lights.
It is very important that there are authors who give us the opportunity to experience. Because this is part of us, this experience is written in our hearts, on our DNA. We're still very close to that time. To survive without pushing the corners of the soul is important, it heals. This story began in 1954, when Maria was young and tried to escape with her beloved repressed nobleman Akosh to Austria, still unoccupied by Soviet troops. This is the history of the war after the war, the history of the interweaving of fates, a story with value orientations and a deep understanding of life.