PRODUCTION: Lea Podhradská Shoots Hungarian/Slovak Documentary My Father's Daughter

06-10-2023

PRODUCTION: Lea Podhradská Shoots Hungarian/Slovak Documentary My Father's Daughter

By Alexander Gabelia

My Father's Daughter by Lea Podhradská credit: Sándor Laczkó

BUDAPEST: The Slovak-Hungarian director/writer Lea Podhradská is currently in production with the creative documentary My Father's Daughter / Apám lánya, about her sister who disappeared without a trace from Slovakia 27 years ago. The film is a Hungarian/Slovak coproduction.

“I was eight years old when I met my sister for the last time. She was standing with a newborn baby in her arms in our doorway, crying. The adults were talking loudly about something, but I ignored them. (…) The film is both a real and a family psychological journey, navigating the viewer through past and present and confronting its characters with the choices they made. Deni was almost a child when she disappeared, and no one ever looked for her. Yet, everyone has a story about who she is and why she disappeared”, said Lea Podhradská.

My Father's Daughter is produced by Krisztina Meggyes, Inez Mátis and Balázs Lévai through Little Bus Production (Hungary) and coproduced by Lea Podhradská through Story Lab (Slovakia).

“Despite the seriousness of the subject, the film tries to deal with the past in a playful way. In addition to family and other archival material, the past is presented through the fantasy stories the director created as a child about her sister. In the film, everyone tells the truth and everyone lies at the same time. Not consciously, but we all make memories and live in self-deception. For this reason, it is a film of altered memories and created realities, where the truth always depends on who is telling it”, Lea Podhradská told FNE.

The project received 82,000 EUR for the production and 14,300 EUR for marketing expenses from the National Film Institute - Hungary, and it is also benefiting from production support from Kultminor. The Hungarian tax rebate is 35,500 EUR.

The total budget is 176,800 EUR.

The filming is taking place in Slovakia and Spain (Barcelona) in September - November 2023.

My Father's Daughter is expected to be completed in July 2024. The producers plan to release it in the festival circuit first and later to launch it with a related impact campaign.

Production Information:

My Father's Daughter by Lea Podhradská, credit: Sándor Laczkó Producer: