It’s funny, at this point Mental Filmness has a bit of a history with both filmmaker and jury member Beatrice Wong and Catalina Kulczar, the filmmaker behind the biographical documentary short Daisy. Beatrice and I both saw Daisy last year and thought it was fantastic, and since Beatrice was a champion from the very start she really jumped at the chance to interview Catalina. Daisy is also a film about history, in a way—understanding your past, intergenerational trauma, and your identity and home.
This was one of the most poignant interviews of the festival to me because it made me tear up a little bit when Beatrice was talking about the meaning of a home. I like what Catalina says about home being more than just a place, but where you feel you belong. Her film weaves together the storylines of the life her family built for themselves after surviving Nazism (and turning away from Judaism to survive) and the Hungarian Revolution in Budapest, and how she copes with intergenerational trauma through open-water swimming. She narrates the film in Spanish, Hungarian, and English. With all the disparate parts of her identity Catalina still manages to find places to call home, like the cold-swimming water group she joined during the pandemic that opens this film. Like many of my favorite documentaries, it shifts focus based on a pivotal unexpected event, but there isn’t a part of it that I feel doesn’t touch profoundly upon the topic of mental health.
Listen to this insightful and moving interview, and watch Daisy during its closing weekend for FREE in the virtual festival through 11/3:
https://watch.eventive.org/mentalfilmness2024/play/66f084de37280200a77ffdfc/66f0915078d1e2003aadad64
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