ERASING FRANK

ERASING FRANK

103 min.   /   2021 Venice International Film Critcs’ Week   /   Drama   /   16mm

Frank Robert (Benjamin Fuchs) is taken to the police after a concert, where Anna enters after an exhausting night and brings Frank out confidently. With the help of Anna, the frontman of the punk band goes to psychiatry, where he meets a strange girl and this encounter confronts his own pettiness, his escape into denial, anarchy. In his inward emigration, he sees what unspoken words, lies, aggression on the psyche, unconfessed pain causes. Yet the inner journey takes him higher and higher, giving him enough strength to make the only ethical decision he can make in the orwellian silence that can move everyone toward the light.

In 1983, behind the Iron Curtain, what happened in psychiatry is still surrounded by silence and lies. The film introduces the viewer into this incredible world in a documentary way that is hard to speak through. Gábor Fabricius, author and director of the film said: “Erasing Frank is an attempt to rediscover social drama and „direct cinema”. I want the audience to be immersed in the raw Orwellian world, to experience the deeply wounding of dehumanization on their own skin. My goal is for those who see it to never forget the images.”

Gábor Fabricius’s first feature film competes for the Lion of the Future award in the Venice International Critics’ Week section. The Venice International Film Festival is one of the most outstanding film festival in the world, the oldest festival in film history, and it is a special honor to be included in its selection. The Venice International Film Festival – in addition to Cannes and Berlin – is one of the “Big Three” international film festivals, first held in 1932.  In the International Critics’ Week section, the audience will see eight films this year, including Gábor Fabricius’s first feature film, Erasing Frank. Films by legendary directors such as Harmony Corine, Kevin Reynolds, Olivier Assayas, Mike Leigh, Pedro Costa, Bryan Singer, Peter Mullan, Pablo Trapero or the Oscar nominee Bruce Weber and the Oscar winner Kenneth Lonergan have debuted at International Critics ’Week in recent years.

Benjámin Fuchs, known as Filo, one of the most promising talents in Hungarian underground music, plays the main role in Erasing Frank. The young Transylvanian actress, Kincső Blénesi, who has already won several international awards and the Junior Prima Prize winner, Andrea Waskovics also played an important role in the film. In other roles we can also see such well-known actors as Ildikó Bánsági, István Lénárt “Papi”, whose last film is this, Miklós B. Székely or the choreographer Pál Frenák. But Tamás Pajor, Krisztián Peer and Andrea Ladányi appear also in the film as a supporting characters.

The visuals of the film were created by Fabricius together with the Icelandic Eggert Ketilsson, the world-famous expert in Hollywood super productions and Dorka Kiss. The cinematographer of the film is Tamás Dobos, edited by Wanda Kiss and Bernadett Tuza-Ritter. Tamás Zányi was responsible for the voice and Judit Sinkovics for the costumes. Gábor Fabricius’s consultant was Gyula Gazdag, film director.