The heavily pregnant high-schooler heroine at the centre of Hungarian adoption drama Six Weeks hides her wounded heart behind an armoured facade of sullen defiance. When her waters break, baby-faced babymother Zsofi (Katalin Román) staggers down to the street, grabs a taxi to the hospital, and asks the driver “got any killer music?” These sharp, witty moments abound in Noemi Veronika Szakonyi’s acutely well-observed character study, which world premieres this week in competition at Sarajevo Film Festival. Driven by a strong team of majority-female talent, Szakonyi’s assured dramatic feature debut is one of the Balkan platform’s most impressive offerings so far, with a stylish look, emotional punch and universal narrative that should help secure further festival bookings and possible art-house interest.
Six Weeks takes its title and plot from a recently passed Hungarian law allowing mothers who give their newborns up for adoption a six-week grace period during which they can legally change their mind. Szakonyi and her film-maker husband Máté Artur Vincze, credited as co-writer here, both realised this new loophole created obvious potential for dramatic tension. With their shared background in issue-driven documentaries, the pair initially conceived this film as a non-fiction project before concluding that a real-life version of Zsofi’s story would be too intrusive and emotionally raw.
A teenage table tennis prodigy with a high chance of qualifying for regional contests that could mean a shot at the Olympics, Zsofi shares a cramped apartment with her flaky, boozy single mother Bea (Zsuzsa Járó) and her sweet but demanding little sister Mesi (Lana Szczaurski). This hard-hearted adolescent has grown up too fast, frequently obliged to play a parental role at home while desperately dreaming of escape through sporting glory. She is also pregnant by her deadbeat ex-boyfriend, but is keeping this secret from most of her fellow players, and has signed up her unborn daughter Hanna to be adopted by an older childless couple, Gabor (András Mészáros) and Emma (Mónika Balsai), who clearly have more time and money to devote to raising a family.
As soon as Hanna is born, Zsofi is hungry to return to her table tennis training. She signs the adoption papers in perfunctory fashion and sneaks back to the gym just days later, defying medical orders to rest, terrified her big sporting chance might fall to somebody else. But over the following weeks, her hormones haywire, her heart aching, her body leaking and bleeding, she begins to reconsider her decision. Sudden surges of protective maternal empathy towards small creatures everywhere, from pet birds to insects, random children in the street to her own baby sister, begin to dictate her moods.
In one beautifully tender scene, she carries a sleeping Mesi into her own bed, whispering a shared dialogue that both clearly know by heart. It’s a subtly rendered moment, not over-explained, smacking of emotional authenticity. The final showdown between Zsofi and Hanna’s adoptive parents is another elegantly composed sequence as Szakonyi sidesteps the explosive pyrotechnics we have been led to expect for a more moving, humane, lyrical pay-off.
An uncharitable viewer might take issue with Six Weeks for loading audience sympathy so heavily towards Zsofi, making all the other characters either flawed or feckless or too indistinct to care. But overall this is a very strong debut, not just for Szakonyi but for her young star too, a non-professional novice blessed with magnetic screen presence and a natural flair for conveying intense emotion with stolen glances and minimal gestures. The engine of almost every scene, often alone, Román delivers a virtuoso lesson in wordless storytelling. She also gives great Resting Bitch Face, a skill that should not be underestimated. This could well be the start of a glittering screen career, either in Hungary or internationally.
Crackling with energy, Six Weeks has a bright and busy look, its visual grammar alternating between stately wide shots and frenetic close-ups in tandem with Zsofi’s febrile emotional state. Zoltán Dévényi’s kinetic camera is always alighting on unexpected pockets of beauty, finding poetry in grungy concrete stairwells, zooming in on tiny beetles, or wheeling around Zsofi as the sun sets her bleach-blonde hair aflame. Music is another strong component in the mix, from throbbing electronic dance-pop to hushed, heart-tugging Hungarian lullabies.
Director: Noemi Veronika Szakonyi
Screenplay: Máté Artur Vincze, Noemi Veronika Szakonyi, Daoud Dániel
Cast: Katalin Román, Zsuzsanna Járó, Lana Szczaurski, Móni Balsai, András Mészáros
Producer: Judit Romwalter
Cinematography: Zoltán Dévényi
Editing: László Hargittai, Anna Vághy
Music: Andor Sperling
Production company: Sparks (Hungary)
Venue: Sarajevo Film Festival (Competition)
In Hungarian
95 minutes
