Lili Horvát grew up in Budapest. She studied audio-visual arts at the Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris and film directing at the University of Theatre and Film in Budapest. “The Wednesday Child,” Horvát’s first feature, won the East of the West Award at the 2015 Karlovy Vary International Film Festival and received numerous awards worldwide. In 2016, Horvát co-founded the production company Poste Restante.

“Preparations to Be Together For an Unknown Period of Time” will screen at the 2020 Warsaw Film Festival, which is taking place October 9-18. The film has also played at Venice Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, and Zurich Film Festival.

W&H: Describe the film for us in your own words.

LH: Reality and fantasy intertwine in the head of a woman in love. Márta, a 40-year-old neurosurgeon, falls in love. She leaves her shining American career behind and returns to Budapest to start a new life with the man she loves — but she waits for him at the Liberty Bridge in vain. He does not appear at their rendezvous.

Márta starts to search for him desperately, but when she finally finds him, the love of her life claims that they have never met before.

W&H: What drew you to this story?

LH: A woman brimming with love travels to the man she will start a new life with. When she arrives, he reacts strangely, saying, “I don’t know you. This is the first time in my life I’ve ever seen you.” Reality shudders – we don’t know whether the man or the woman is telling the truth.

When this situation came to me, I didn’t know yet who the woman was or who the man was, but this was the core idea around which the story of the film would grow.

I guarded that sprout of a scene for a long time, then suddenly the ideas began to come. They should both be doctors, two people around 40 years old. The woman should come from a distant place, another continent. She needs to sacrifice something for him. And so on.

I realized that what I wanted to speak about was the enormous role of our own imagination when we are in love.

W&H: What do you want people to think about after they watch the film?

LH: It’s important that our heroine doesn’t navigate herself into the risky trials of this inner journey at the the typical younger, [idealistic] age, but while approaching 40 — when a person has much more to lose. I see some great sovereignty in this.

There’s an inner space in all of us where processes occur that are undetectable on the surface — a secret life where we weave plans and dreams relating to ourselves. This is the real terrain of the film: insight, imagination, the realm of intuition.

W&H: What was the biggest challenge in making the film?

LH: The professional challenges were inspiring, even the hardest ones. The really big challenge was to maintain a well-balanced private life during the three months of intense pre-production and shooting.

My daughter was four years old at the time, and I’m the type of mother who normally brings her kid home after lunchtime from kindergarten. It is a cliché that children grow up terribly fast, but it’s true. The only way I can make the heartache of time flying away bearable is if we are truly together during this incredibly rich period.

W&H: How did you get your film funded? Share some insights into how you got the film made.

LH: Creative producer Dóra Csernátony and I co-founded the production company Poste Restante in 2016. Together with our producer-partner Péter Miskolczi, we applied for state funding with our first project, “Preparations to Be Together For an Unknown Period of Time.”

The film was funded by the National Film Institute — back then, its name was still Hungarian National Film Fund — and through the tax shelter of Hungary. We had a smooth road financing this film. My first feature, “The Wednesday Child,” was a Hungarian-German co-production, which won the East of the West Award at Karlovy Vary 2015 and then had a very successful festival journey.

Thanks to that, it was clear that the Film Fund was willing to support me in the making of my next film. They liked the idea of “Preparations to Be Together For an Unknown Period of Time” from the beginning.

W&H: What inspired you to become a filmmaker?

LH: When I was a teenager, I wrote short stories and was interested in photography. I think I found the amalgam of these two in filmmaking.

After graduating from high school, I spent a year in Paris with my family. My father was a guest professor at the Sorbonne. I didn’t have many friends there and was quite lonely, so I spent most of my free time and pocket money sitting in one of the wonderful little art cinemas of Paris.

I saw “Love Streams” by John Cassavetes, “The Night and The Adventure” by Michelangelo Antonioni, “The 400 Blows” and “Jules and Jim” by François Truffaut, “Permanent Vacation” by Jim Jarmusch, “Persona” by Ingmar Bergman – among many other films. It was a formative experience that started my education as a filmmaker.

W&H: What’s the best and worst advice you’ve received?

LH: The first good advice I remember well came from my father. I was in second grade, eight years old, maybe. I was a bookworm, but I totally hated that one children’s book that was given to us at school as compulsory reading. The exercise was to write a summary of the plot of the book. I told my father I was simply unable to do this. He advised me to complete the assignment but instead of giving a plot summary, I should write about why I didn’t like the book. Critical thinking is something I learned from my parents very early on.

More recently, I received good advice from the composer I worked with on my previous film, Gábor Presser, a wonderful person, and a prominent musician in Hungary. He suggested that I produce or co-produce my next film myself, and cited the production history of the records of The Rolling Stones as an example.

Unfortunately, I have much stronger memories of my own bad decisions than of the pieces of bad advice I’ve received.

W&H: What advice do you have for other female directors?

LH: I think we shouldn’t think of ourselves primarily as female directors. Don’t let that be a barrier, nor a shelter. We are human beings defined in our life and in our work by so many things: the parents that raised us, the books we read, the films we saw, the schools we went to, the people we loved – and yes, by our gender too.

W&H: Name your favorite woman-directed film and why.

LH: I don’t have one big favorite, but if I have to name one woman-directed film, it would be “Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles” by Chantal Akerman. This film gives me force whenever I watch it.

W&H: How are you adjusting to life during the COVID-19 pandemic? Are you keeping creative, and if so, how?

LH: Luckily, I got “Preparations to Be Together For an Unknown Period of Time” completed a few weeks before the lockdown. For me, it would be time to go back to zero anyway: I am now deep in the writing process of my next film. And I’m trying not to be too disappointed by all the wonderful film festivals I cannot attend in-person with the film.

W&H: Recent protests in the U.S. and abroad have highlighted racism and anti-Black police brutality. The film industry has a long history of underrepresenting people of color onscreen and behind the scenes and reinforcing — and creating — negative stereotypes. What actions do you think need to be taken to make Hollywood and/or the doc world more inclusive?

LH: A friend of mine was invited to a birthday party as a child. She was around eight years old. Her father took her home after the party, and her mother asked her how it was – and was also asking about the stepfather of the birthday kid, a man the mother knew was from Africa. My friend told her mom that the stepdad of the birthday kid was really nice, and played a lot of games with them during the party. Her mother then asked her if the stepfather was black. My friend started to think. She was thinking for a minute or two, and then honestly replied, “I don’t know.” I wish Hollywood and the whole world the wisdom and the lack of prejudice of this eight-year-old child.