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Our film Necklace was invited to several festivals. Now, the great Sweet Democracy Film Awards – from Rome – have recognised our work with the Best Screenplay Award. Thank you!

„You shouldn’t dream your film, you should make it!” Steven Spielberg

BIO

Peter Halmi – director, producer – was born in Hungary. His father was a CEO in theater so he grew up in a theatrical atmosphere.He graduated at the University of Theatre and Film Arts in Budapest. He began his career as an actor. He played leading roles in numerous performances in Germany, Japan, Canada and in the United States – The Phantom of the Opera, The Bat, The Merry Widow, Chicago, A Little Night Music, A View From The Bridge, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Anna Karenina.

He was invited to Los Angeles in 2012 where he worked as a theater director for four years –
Circus Princess, Baroness Lili, A Night at the Opera, Countess Maritza, All’s Well that Ends Well.

He is the Artistic Director of Jona Film Paris later on Jonah Film Entertainment since 2017 when he started his film career – Coriandoli Verdi, J’en Ai Marre, Insieme, Unsent Letter, Adieu, Canzone D’Amore, Fille de l’Océan, Dreams of Los Angeles, It Was September, A Kind of Love, Le Collier.

Your film differs from common themes and aesthetics and yours is an evident very personal artistic research. What made you want to tell this story?

My father was a CEO in theater so I grew up in a theatrical atmosphere. Already as a child I loved the wonderful music of Verdi and Puccini. I aspired to create the triple unit of drama, music and beauty such as in opera performances. Our friend Jean-Philippe is a musician and is blind. His wonderful personality had an effect on my writing the script of „Le Collier”.

“The Necklace” is visually exceptional, the staging is refined and treated in detail. But there is also a majestic post-production work, above all on sound and editing. What is the most important part for you in creating the film? Or which one do you prefer?

I put big emphasize on rehearsal with the actors before shooting and on the post-production since the film then receives its final form. While I was writing the script and saw the pictures visually in front of me, I immediately had melodies in my head. Italian and French classic films of the 60s and 70s enchant me in which harmony and beauty dominate. This charm displayed by Maia is destroyed by Fausto which is personified by the excellent french actor Eric da Costa. Eric’s suggestive presence in the film is a counterpole Maia’s fragility and mental insecurity.

The protagonist is a woman, and this is an important choice. She collects a series of attributes of sensuality, vulnerability, vanity and courage, which give the film a precise direction. What is your relationship with the female protagonists? Do you think they can better represent certain expressions of your imagination?

As director I love the complexity of classic female figures as Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. My fiancée Kristina Goztola, who is also the producer of the film, has extensive international film experience. Kristina played with big actors as Rosamund Pike, Jason Clarke. Her acting depicts exactly what I envisioned. The female attraction will be distorted by the excessive vanity.

Your short film lasts about 14 minutes, but the story and the visual suggestions that surround it allow the film to potentially expand well beyond the size of the short film. Do you feel comfortable with short storytelling or do you often feel you need more time?

Originally it was supposed to be a short movie. Although now that I’m working on my next script which will be a feature film, I have opportunity to depict a character deeper and to represent a more complicated plot. More time, more options.

“The Necklace” (“Le Collier”) is the anguished portrait of a perverse fantasy, the other face of beauty, when it devours reality and seduces the spirit. The structure of the film, cleverly orchestrated by Peter Halmi, the director, allows the viewer to feel the majestic feeling of ruin when it arrives. Halmi, as a true cinematographic author, manages to give life to a personal vision, which goes well beyond the premises of an excellent story. By taking advantage of the more subliminal elements of cinematographic narration, such as music, editing and sound, the director manages to create a “reality of the unconscious”, which gradually replaces the classic and ordinary tone with which the film begins.

In this climax of magnificent cinematographic value, a strong narrative component never fails. The excellent script on which the film is based is part of that sublimation of reality mentioned above. The dialogue is sharp, dry and suspended. Suspended in the Parisian alleys, or in the mostly empty house of the blind man. In the relentless pace of narration, the specter of greed and vanity makes its way to the end, when the film reaches the height of its delirium and the protagonist seems to serve her faults in a kind of hell more complex than simple punishment. The work investigates the corruption of the spirit and in representing this perverse attraction, Peter Halmi builds a refined and sparkling aesthetic system of rare beauty, which compels the viewer to his personal resistance against the charm of ruthless vanity. Each element of this film composes an articulated interweaving of symbols and ambiguities: a continuous representation of the disagreement between desire and morality, also declined in a female perspective, which gives a powerful charge of complexity and elegance to the labyrinths of the psyche. In this personal change of reality, between dreamlike and delirium moments, Peter Halmi affirms himself as an extremely interesting author.

From India to Italy – European Premiere, Le Collier – in ROME, Prisma Film Awards 🙂 ??