Post Mortem

Countless ghosts have been stuck in our world as a result of the destruction caused by World War I and the Spanish Flu epidemic. Tomás, the wandering post mortem photographer, gets to a haunted village after meeting a ten-year-old orphan girl, Anna, during the freezing winter of 1918. After experiencing the strange, supernatural phenomena, he decides to investigate the intentions of the ghosts. Anna accompanies Tomás's exploration through all its dangers, while the ghosts rave with fury.

  • Péter Bergendy
    Director
  • Piros Zánkay
    Writer
  • Tamás Lajos
    Producer
  • Ábel Köves
    Producer
  • Gábor Hellebrandt
    Creative Producer
  • Viktor Klem
    Key Cast
    "Tomás"
  • Fruzsina Hais
    Key Cast
    "Anna"
  • Judit Schell
    Key Cast
    "Marcsa"
  • András Nagy
    Cinematographer
  • István Király
    Editor
  • Project Type:
    Feature
  • Runtime:
    1 hour 55 minutes
  • Production Budget:
    2,880,800 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    Hungary
  • Country of Filming:
    Hungary
  • Language:
    Hungarian
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital (4k)
  • Aspect Ratio:
    2.39
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - Péter Bergendy

Péter Bergendy is a Hungarian director, born in 1964. He got his first camera from his grandfather at the age of six. From that moment film became part of his life. Originally graduated as psychologist, where he wrote his thesis on horror film psychology. For ten years he was the editor-in-chief of the Hungarian issue of German Cinema Magazine, he worked as academic researcher for the Hungarian Film Institute, also as editor and director in Hungarian Television. For 25 years now he's been ditched in Hungarian and international commercial directing, his multiple award-winning commercials are shown across the world. As a director, his first feature film, a romantic comedy 'Stop Mom Teresa!' was released in 2004 achieving national and international recognition for him. His cold war spy film noir 'The Exam' (2011) has won New Directors Gold Hugo, in Chicago International Film Festival 2012. His next thriller, "Trezor" (2018) was the first ever Hungarian tv-film nominated for International Emmy Award, and it has won eight Hungarian Film Awards in 2019. In 2020 Péter Bergendy was awarded the national Balázs Béla Prize for his outstanding services in the arts and motion pictures.

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Director Statement

I loved horror movies as a kid. Despite the fact that horror was banned in socialist Hungary because it was considered a bourgeois genre, I still managed to see the best of them. Later, as a psychologist, I studied the psychology of horror, and even wrote my thesis on it. Because horror tells us something important about the unconscious mind, revealing the workings and problems of the psyche in the language of ancient human symbols and archetypes. To put it simply: it’s really exciting.
After the success of my historical film noirs, I thought it’s about time Hungary came out with a horror film too. Therefore, my creative producer and partner, Gábor Hellebrandt, and I imagined a ghost story, which, in addition to its psychological content, was somehow also closely related to Hungary. We conjured up the ghosts from a time of great loss in Hungarian history, directly after World War I, during the Spanish Flu pandemic. In our film, the ghosts of our painful past overrun a Hungarian village to which a post mortem photographer arrives, who is concerned with death the same way the genre of horror is. The photographer then meets a little girl and perhaps his own unconscious mind.
I hope audiences will gladly accompany us into this ghostly world and will be open to stirring up the deeper layers of their unconscious.