The Lost Notebook (2024)

The Lost Notebook

What is reality without fiction? That’s the question Danish filmmaker and anthropologist Ida Marie Gedbjerb Sørensen, a.k.a. Qamar, poses in her latest work “The Lost Notebook,” which world premiered at CPH:DOX in Copenhagen where it won one of the festival’s New Vision awards and is now competing for best film at Bologna’s Biografilm Festival.

Starting from an old diary found in an attic in Budapest, in which Hungarian worker Istvan wrote down all the films he saw between 1942 and 1994 (a total of 2158 titles), the director traces the man’s descendants to probe into this family made up of four generations of cinephiles (father, children, grand-children, great-grand-children) and its secrets or hidden traumas that have led them to take refuge in fiction to escape a not very happy reality.

It is precisely that notebook, and what it tells us about Istvan who carefully noted down each title along with their country of origin but also the date when he watched them as well as which cinema they were shown at in socialist-era Budapest, what reveals before us a passion cultivated for 52 years almost obsessively.

However if someone therefore expects a detailed immersion into communist Hungary’s cinema allowed by censors might be left somewhat disappointed because this isn’t really about that nor does it immediately become clear what it is about either. What interests Sørensen is why did Istvan write them all down like this? Why did he only express his opinions changing colours (red ones were those he liked most)? And why did he count down how many times had gone to one cinema rather than another at end year?

To get closer to an answer she finds eldest son Jr who was brought up by father himself after mother left them behind; through him she meets rest one after another until all are gathered around her. And it turns out that they are not only ardent fans but also big collectors of DVDs with action movies being their favourite genre, which she then watches with them too: stories about poverty orphanship concealed homosexual love denied selfhoods come tumbling out of closets like skeletons falling off hooks; these are people for whom should smile when together before any kind screen will do.

At same time learns more about papa Istvan’s past and directly addresses him in voice over asking if film had been his way out painful reality probably so indeed just as today for kids grand-kids great-grandkids alike

Sometimes we see parts of movies from his list without mentioning their titles. These touch on historical events the 1956 Hungarian revolution, for instance, when Istvan never went to the cinema; the years after that, when censorship loosened and American action films came in droves and I want to know more about that: how history affected film-watching then and there. But instead of answering such questions, the director goes back to stories from our little family’s life today which only makes you wonder what else there might have been to learn from this movie, inspired by finding that precious notebook.

Watch The Lost Notebook For Free On Gomovies.