The release of award-winning Hungarian writer/director Szabolcs Hajdu’s immersive nocturnal drama ’Treasure City’ was released on 18th June in Virtual Cinemas and Premium VOD.
A subtle mix of nocturnal urban tales exploring the darker side of human relations, the film drops the viewer into a web of family, sexual, political and romantic relationships where nothing’s quite what it seems. A disagreement in a florists’ spirals badly out of control; a family dinner deteriorates into acrimony; an anti-facist demo raises tensions; a visit to an empty bar leads to an unexpected encounter – one event connects to another, people appear in one situation and reappear in another, and by the end, the lives of 22 people intersect in unpredictable ways, during 90-minutes in one magical night in the city they share.
Prolific Hungarian filmmaker Szabolcs Hajdu has won numerous awards for his work, with his 2010 fantasy drama, and Berlin Film Festival hit, Bibliothèque Pascal winning prizes at the Media Central European Film Festival, the Sarajevo Film Festival and the Toburon International Film Festival. His 2016 drama It’s Not the Time of My Life won awards at the Bosphorus Film Festival, the Miskolc International Film Festival, the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, and got the Special Jury Prize at the Sochi International Film Festival.
In ’Treasure City’ Hadju turns the spotlight on the city at night, and the interweaving stories of its inhabitants. With a brilliant, natural ensemble cast (including stand outs from Banality’s Lilla Sárosdi and Biblothèque Pascal’s Orsolya Török-Illyés), a pulsing, driving score by Freakin’ Disco, superb cinematography (with the camera gliding and swooping around the city) from Csaba Bántó, and assured direction from Hadju, TREASURE CITY offers a valuable and gripping glimpse into a hidden world that reveals much about human nature, and the way we live now.