You’ve got their story. You decide what to do with it.

A young film director, Tamás is invited to a village to lead a summer art workshop for kids. He quickly discovers that the village is overrun with corruption and exploitation. He starts an investigation into the abusive mayor and exposes him by shooting a documentary. The mayor finds out about Tamás’ new mission, the locals turn against each other, and what began as an easygoing summer adventure, starts to threaten everyone involved.

Martin Boross’ feature debut is a critical reflection on the filmmakers’ responsibility and harmful activism in an all-too-familiar microcosm of oppression.

Participant of First Cut Lab Hungary ’22.
Winner of Just Film Award in the Work in Progress section of Industry@Tallinn & Baltic Event in ’22.

Nominations:
Best Screenplay (Hungarian Motion Picture Festival)
Best Debut Feature Film (Hungarian Motion Picture Festival)

 

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT
The idea for the story came out of my experience filming a documentary, which centered on a group of teenagers in a Roma-majority Hungarian village. During filming, we came across the ethical questions which we must face when making work with and about marginalized groups: Who has authorship? When should we intervene? What happens to our carefully built relationships after a project ends?
I began playing with the idea of activism going wrong and a story in which the artists lie to themselves about the effect and importance of their work, and think that they can solve a community’s problems better than the community itself.
Raw Material is a social drama with a mixed cast of professional and non-professional actors.
The film is about the collision of two cultures and the parallel stories of leaders whose success legitimates their abuse of power. It’s a modern colonization story where the colonizer is not a big firm or an oppressive country, but rather a well-meaning artist: a filmmaker.