Budapest’s NFI Filmlab Offers One-Stop Post-Production Shop for Venice Contenders ‘Orphan,’ ‘Silent Friend’ and More

“The Brutalist” director Brady Corbet sent film Twitter into a flurry last year when he boasted that it took 26 reels of 70mm film stock, weighing approximately 300 pounds, to bring his 215-minute epic to life.

Hungarian filmmaker Ildikó Enyedi might have just given Corbet a run for his money.

During production of her triptych drama “Silent Friend,” which will compete for a Golden Lion at this year’s Venice Film Festival, Enyedi developed more than 65,000 feet of 35mm and nearly 30,000 feet of 16mm film stock — enough celluloid to carpet the Lido several times over.  

When it came to the demanding work of processing their stock, both directors chose Budapest’s NFI Filmlab, which was founded in 1957 and remains at the forefront of cutting-edge post-production technology. A recent spate of investment has given a dramatic upgrade to its facilities, including the new processing machines that Enyedi and her team used while shooting “Silent Friend.” 

Other critically acclaimed filmmakers have followed suit, including Yorgos Lanthimos (“Poor Things”), Pablo Larraín (“Maria”) and Hungary’s László Nemes, who took this year’s Golden Lion contender “Orphan” to the Budapest lab for 35mm color negative processing, scanning, digital color grading and analog image and sound recording.

NFI Filmlab head Viktória Sovák says it’s “the most complete and most experienced film laboratory in Central Europe,” providing both analog and a full range of digital film post-production services. 

The lab is renowned for its highly skilled professionals and their meticulous approach to their work, with “Orphan” colorist László Kovács describing how he was “in daily contact with cinematographer Mátyás Erdély” throughout the film’s 10-week shoot.

That allowed the technicians to make crucial decisions about the color grading in real time, while ensuring that editor Péter Politzer “could already work with material that was very close to the final visual style of the film.”

“After the editing was completed, in the post-production phase, we spent over 140 hours on color grading to achieve the look that audiences will see in cinemas,” says Kovács, adding that the team achieved a “unique quality on 35mm print that you have never seen before.”

The NFI Filmlab remains one of the few film laboratories in Europe that provides complete analog post-production services, according to Sovák, which is why so many renowned directors keep coming back.

“Many excellent filmmakers continue to shoot on 35mm and 70mm film, and analog is certainly experiencing a renaissance,” she says. “We believe that we have to perpetuate analog technology.”