Nimród Antal
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Nimród Antal [pronounced: Neemrode] (November 30, 1973 in Los Angeles, California) is a U.S. film director of Hungarian ancestry. Antal arrived in Hungary in 1991 to study at the Hungarian Film Academy. He never graduated, but stayed on to work in the film and television industry. In 2005, he moved back to his hometown of Los Angeles to pursue success in Hollywood.
He is best known for writing and directing the film Kontroll (2003). The backdrop of the film is the Budapest Metro subway system. Kontroll, refers to the act of ticket inspectors checking to ensure a rider has paid their fare.
Antal used the same idea in his 1997 music video "Szandál" for the rock band Warpigs.
The film Kontroll, Antal's feature film debut, won numerous awards, including the Award of the Youth at the Cannes Film Festival and the Golden Hugo (main prize) at the Chicago International Film Festival, as well as a European Film Award nomination for Best Director.
Antal had an extremely difficult time getting the movie made, since it was widely considered to be impossible to shoot in the Budapest subway system. On one hand, there are no unused stretches, meaning that shooting (including set-up and wrap-out time) could only take place when trains weren't operating, between 11:30pm and 4:30am. The other reason was the Mad Max-like treatment of ticket-checkers around which the film was based. It was assumed the BKV (Budapest Transport Authority) would never grant permission for its facilities to be used to create such a depiction. In the end, producer Tamas Hutlassa was able to use his earnest charms to convince the shoot to take place in the subway. The film was preceded by BKV chairman Botond Aba making a disclaimer (which many audience members thought was included for comedic purposes), and BKV employees were given free tickets to see it in cinemas.
Since the early 1990s, Antal has been a prolific and highly-successful director of music videos and televisions commercials in Hungary. He has also been hired to direct commercials in other Central European countries such as the Czech Republic. His American sensibilities, particularly a comfort with combining humour and graphic violence have been perceived as a breath of fresh air by Hungarian fans from the time of his very first low-budget efforts.
His long-term "confirmed bachelor" status and exceptionally good looks helped make him a much sought-after director among advertising agencies and production companies in Budapest, particularly those run by women.
Antal has also appeared in acting roles in numerous Hungarian films. Best known among these are András Salamon's Közel a szerelemhez (1999) and Balra a nap nyugszik (2000), directed by András Fésös. Antal had major supporting parts in both of these films.
His most famous commercial was the Holsten beer commercial where a policemen tries to dissuade a suicidal man from jumping by helping himself to the man's ice-cold Holsten beer. The ad was shot in a Budapest dentist's office. The dentist's father and Antal's studied dentistry together prior to the latter's emigration to the United States. The much-loved punchline to the ad, "Nem ugrunk le egy sörért?" (literally "What say we hop down for a beer?"), doesn't really work in English, but was considered a very clever word-play on a typical Hungarian expression, and has entered the local catch-phrase lexicon.
Antal's new film Vacancy, starring Kate Beckinsale and Luke Wilson, was released on April 20, 2007.
