László Nemes: From Son of Saul to Orphan – my father’s own story

“Directly thrown into the limelight, into the very heart of the sacred temple of Hollywood… all these ceremonies and awards… I had to work through that experience and assimilate it and try to find myself in it. It was very extreme.”

During the awards season he met his “hero” Spielberg, who praised the film, but Nemes knew he could never follow him into Hollywood.

“I wanted to make films my way,” he says. “And I don’t think the Anglo-American system is very suited for that. They want more control and the executives have a lot to say. And those voices are usually the ones that make the films go and crash from an artistic value. You tend to create a film to find a middle-of-the-road strategy… you just create something that’s mediocre.”

Turning his back on Hollywood, Nemes went off to make 2018’s Sunset, a story that followed the fate of a woman – played by newcomer Juli Jakab – in Budapest before the First World War.

A starchy period piece, it was proof that Nemes hadn’t quite worked out how to follow a masterpiece such as Son of Saul. But, he could argue, he never compromised. “In a way, I think cinema has to be like that. Executives shouldn’t be telling the director what to do. That’s a huge problem, I think.”

Now 49, he’s back with his third film, Orphan – a beautifully crafted work inspired by his own family history. “The story has been with me for ever, because it’s my father’s story,” he explains.

Long before he became a well-known Hungarian film and theatre director, the early years of Nemes’ father, András Jeles, were traumatic. He was placed in an orphanage from his birth until the age of four when his mother – Nemes’ grandmother – went into hiding during the Holocaust.

In Orphan, a prologue shows the four-year-old Andor – an alter ego of sorts for Jeles – reunited with his Jewish mother Klára (Andrea Waskovics) but the real action begins eight years later in 1957 in Budapest – with Hungary under Soviet control.

The permanently angry Andor (Bojtorján Barabás) discovers that the man he thought was his father – someone he never met, who was sent to the concentration camps never to return – was nothing of the sort.

A still from the director's new film[Missing Credit]

The twist, so to speak, comes as Andor meets his real father, Berend (Grégory Gadebois), a brusque and abusive butcher who hid his mother all these years.

Nemes heard similar stories growing up from his grandmother. “I knew that my father had to change his name at the age of 12, that he thought that his real father was different…and he had to come to terms with an abusive man who took back his family that was never his to begin with."

Scripting the film with Clara Royer, Nemes had to change some details. The man that his father mistakenly thought was his real father did not die in Auschwitz.

“He died in forced labour,” he explains. “But that would have been a little bit complicated to communicate that kind of idea, a Jewish man taken to forced labour in the Forties.”

As Nemes notes, his father’s history was shaped by the Second World War – so much so, he would go on to direct 1993’s Why Wasn’t He There?, the story of a 13-year-old Jewish girl and her family living under Nazi occupation in Hungary.

“I just remember growing up with this idea, with the story of my father, my father’s origin being an ongoing, traumatic event. Until this day, he says he owes his life to Auschwitz.” What does he mean by that?

“Had the deportation of the Hungarian Jews not taken place, he wouldn’t have been born because his mother wouldn’t have had to go to the countryside, to be hidden by a man who abused her.

"So in his story, the whole European 20th century is condensed, in a way… I think it encapsulates the European trauma. Hungary, very specifically, but also central Europe, and I think broader than this, the whole European continent.”

To make the film, Nemes had to buy the life rights of his father, who is now 81. Has he seen the movie? “He’s seen the film,” Nemes nods, slowly. “I don’t know what he thinks. He didn’t want to tell me. It’s very difficult [for him, but] I think he was moved.”

I wonder if his father ever found any peace. “I don’t think so.” Did he remain angry at the world? “Yeah, I think so, for good reason. It’s very problematic.”

Throughout Orphan, antisemitic feeling runs through the veins of the story – something Nemes himself was raised with. “It’s a constant,” he says. “I mean, I grew up with… I wasn’t protected from the knowledge of the traumas of the 20th century. I was not protected. I was bullied in school for being Jewish. I had a very intimate, immersive experience of antisemitism in Hungary.” He clarifies. “[Being] bullied for being Jewish, that was pretty immersive. Psychologically.”

I wonder, given what his grandmother and father went through, and the pain they endured, how difficult it was for Nemes to live with?

“Very, very difficult. Almost a continuation of something that was coming from the Holocaust. I’m not saying it originated from the Holocaust, but it definitely was coming also from the Holocaust.”

Antisemitism may be at its peak now, following the horrors of the Israel-Palestine conflict, but it’s a sentiment that has bubbled away ever since the end of the Second World War.

“It never disappeared,” he says. “I think in the West it definitely found a new sort of unashamed form, an unashamed orgy that the West is not so familiar with. Well, we knew it in central Europe, but the West doesn’t know it in that form, and they still think it’s OK. It’s just the beginning.

"I’m definitely very pessimistic. What I’m more pessimistic about is the West. I think there will be peace in the Middle East way before the hatred of the Jews will die out, especially from the West, now that it’s revelling in that Jewish obsession.”

Intriguingly, when Orphan premiered at the Venice Film Festival last September, it was shut out of the awards given by the jury led by director Alexander Payne. Certainly, Barabás – in practically every frame as Andor – deserved the Marcello Mastroianni Award, the annual prize given to a young performer.

“I don’t understand why this film was completely ignored,” says Nemes. “Well, I can understand it. I think it is absolutely political. Anything that’s Jewish nowadays… nobody would touch it with a ten-foot pole.”

I reference The Voice of Hind Rajab, the Palestinian documentary that took the festival’s second prize (but was denied the top spot, many felt, due to its political content). “I am a militant against the politicisation of cinema,” he replies.

“I think it’s a terrible, terrible thing. There’s nothing lower than that. It’s terrible. Films are here to dive into the very intricate layers of the human condition and tell the big stories, anthropologically relevant stories, and not to talk about political issues in an overt way.”

This month, Nemes is back in Cannes competition with his fourth film – Moulin – which follows the fate of French Resistance fighter Jean Moulin, played by Gilles Lellouche. Lars Eidinger co-stars as Klaus Barbie – the so-called Butcher of Lyons who was known for torturing Jews and Resistance members.

In some ways, it brings him full circle. Nemes spent his teenage years in Paris before moving to New York where he studied at the Tisch School of the Arts. He can speak French “like a native”, and directing the actors in his second language was never an issue.

Working in the French system, he says, has been much easier than going to America.

“Well, the thing is, I could have gone to Hollywood and made the films their way, but I didn’t want to do that. You can’t have it both ways.”

Does he feel the French care more about art house cinema? “Well, I’m not sure they do, but they pretend!” he chuckles. “And they seem to care a little bit more.” He pauses for thought.

“You never get in life what you want; it’s what you need that you get. So I wanted to go to Hollywood and ended up in France.”

It may be the wisest move of his career.

Orphan is in cinemas from May 15