Fortune smiled. The numbers came out right. The winnings were 600 million Hungarian forints, more than $2 million, enough for 15 luxury cars and at least 100 trips around the world. In October 2013, Anikó and Laci, a couple in late middle age, living in straitened circumstances in a small town in Hungary, struck it rich on the lottery. Their story is told in Mátyás Kálmán’s new film Paying A Visit To Fortuna (screening in Sarajevo’s Documentary Competition).
Kálmán, who was introduced to the couple by a social worker friend, spent three years making the film.
“He [the friend] told me about a guy who was lucky enough to win the lottery and was previously living in a homeless shelter,” the director recalls. At first, Kálmán didn’t pay much attention. However, the couple’s story was covered in various local and international newspapers, including The Guardian in the UK, and his curiosity was piqued.
Laci (László) was a former homeless alcoholic. Anikó had endured domestic abuse at the hands of a previous partner. She had debilitating health issues. They had been living in near poverty together…and then they became very rich. “They were the very first in Hungary to go public with the fact that they had won the lottery,” the director notes.
Kálmán felt their story could make for a film that was both “very universal and very unusual.” After he wrote to them via Facebook, the couple took to the filmmaker and invited him into their home. Unlike almost everyone else they met when they came into money, he neither wanted hand-outs and nor did he give them advice on how to use their new-found wealth.
“You had that naivety shining out of you. You didn’t want to take advantage of us, that’s why we let you in to our lives,” Anikó later told Kálmán. “I didn’t mind the camera, I just as naturally told everyone to fuck off, even in front of the camera,” she also observed.
The couple turned out to be screen naturals. Inevitably, so-called friends tried to take advantage of their new-found wealth. Having witnessed so much abuse and suffering caused by heavy drinking, Anikó had a dream of opening a cafe which wouldn’t serve alcohol. Laci was recovering from his own bouts of alcoholism.
Kálmán filmed the couple in their everyday life, spending “70 to 80 days” with them over the shooting period. “I couldn’t have done this film without liking them – and respecting them, of course.”
Anikó and Laci were vulnerable but courageous. They had endured very tough times. Now, in their 50s, they were looking to find happiness. They had very different ideas as to how they should re-invent their lives. Anikó hoped to help others. Laci simply wanted to enjoy his new-found affluence. This caused friction between them.
Paying A Visit To Fortuna is shot in traditional vérité fashion. “I didn’t really look for this style. It was the only solution,” Kálmán, an experienced video journalist as well as a producer and director, says of his fly on the wall approach.
The film touches on some dark subjects, alcoholism and domestic abuse (both of which are rife in Hungary) among them. However, it also has plenty of tenderness and humour. The luck which Anikó and Laci enjoyed wasn’t just winning the lotto but meeting each other. And, no, they don’t fritter their fortune away.
“They’ve stopped trying to do any kind of business and they just try to have a normal, calm life together,” the director notes of how the couple spend their time today. “They just have a relaxed life.”
The project has taken several years to complete. Eventually, after a period in which he had struggled to complete the film, Kálmán secured post-production support from HAVC – Croatian Audiovisual Centre. “We finally managed to finish,” the director sighs. (The doc was made through Colloc Productions and ELF Pictures in co-production with Zagreb-based Peglanje snova).
Anikó and Laci have now both seen the documentary and given it their blessing.
“When you came to film, we had it in our minds that we are interested in what the outside world think of us. Today I don’t care, I’m like, this film is not for the outside world, it’s for me. I can watch it back any time so it can help me to avoid making the mistakes I made back then,” Laci recently told the director.
Now, Kálmán is looking at how Paying A Visit To Fortuna might be distributed. The director is sceptical that Hungarian broadcasters will want to show it. However, the doc has already been acquired by Croatian TV and Kálmán is hopeful of securing a theatrical release in Hungary itself.
“We will do our best to make sure it gets a proper distribution.”
The director is already preparing a new project, Hungarian To Orbit, which he will co-direct with Marcell Gerö. This is a documentary about the nascent but very ambitious Hungarian space programme which aims to have an astronaut on a mission by 2024. Ferenc Pusztai (KMH Film) and Sára László (Campfilm) are aboard as producers.
