GENRE

Documentary

RUNNING TIME

90 minutes

YEAR

2017

COUNTRY

Hungary

LANGUAGE

English, German, Hungarian

DIRECTOR

Bálint Révész

PRODUCER

László Kántor, Bálint Révész

MUSIC

Albert Márkos

synopsis

How does memory work? How can experiences be handed down from generation to generation? How does the act of narration change the experience? Three young men and their grannies go on a quest for their historic and personal legacy. There’s the British spy with a bone-dry sense of humour, the Hungarian communist who survived the Holocaust and the German dancer whose look back turns out to be the most difficult.
Unlike many recent documentaries which focused on conversation and raised their protagonists on a pedestal of awe, the “Granny Project” takes a different approach: playful, not afraid of confrontations, sometimes silly and seconds later honest and emotional. An unconventional attempt of the grandchildren’s generation to ask, on a different level, questions that drove their parents to the streets in the 1960s. This film neither aims to be antagonistic nor accusatory. Instead it’s a perhaps naive but no less necessary attempt to understand the other. When the three grannies sit around a table with their grandsons and various interpreters we realise that two things at least are necessary to really bring the past and present in contact with each other: an honest interest in one’s opposite party and a good translation.