„Nothing is impossible until it is impossible” – Interview with Allan Sørensen, the new program director of the Titanic International Film Festival

It was the 22nd Titanic International Film Festival that has just finished in Budapest – with a lot of fresh and challenging movies. But another fact makes this year’s festival special: it has a new program director, Allan Sørensen from Denmark. So we at Daily News Hungary were very curious of what he did until now, what he finds challenging in putting together this really exciting program, what his concept was and how he found this job.

DailyNewsHungary: How would you summarize this year’s Titanic Film Festival?
Allan Sørensen: The festival went quite well, and we were pleased to receive a number of talented directors from abroad, among them the French director Lucie Borleteau, whose film Fidelio – Alice utazása ended up being awarded as the best film in our competition section. In general, audiences seemed to appreciate this year’s programme, as we improved our audience figures significantly from last year. A number of screenings were sold out, for instance Citizenfour, Megmaradt Alice-nek (Still Alice), Snowpiercer, and Ex-Machina were in high demand, to name just a few. Whereas judging by the audience voting system Hétköznapi vámpírok (What We Do In the Shadows) was the most beloved film of the festival this year. Both Citizenfour and Hétköznapi vámpírok (What We Do In the Shadows) will be in Hungarian cinemas soon for all to enjoy.

DailyNewsHungary: You are now a program director of the Titanic International Film Festival of Hungary. Does your studies relate to the film industry? Do you make films eventually? How did you get in contact with the festival?
Allan Sørensen: I have had my master in english and danish in the University of Copenhagen. During my studies I attended a lot of film-related courses and I even wrote my master’s thesis on the western genre. I have always been interested about the film industry and I have always been in love with the cinema and it is really great to now have a job that is actually a natural continuation of all my studies and a flow in a sense that it all connects. It is great having the opportunity to put my hobby, my passion and my professional together.

DailyNewsHungary: Is this your first film-related job?
Allan Sørensen: Previously, after having finished my studies I used to work at the Danish Film Institute in Copenhagen, the Cinematheque. This is sort of a museum for film. A museum in a sense that the cinematheque screens films that are not neccessarily new but they are for example classics or historical films. So what you see on the screen is a living image – it is a museum in that sense; similar to Örökmozgó that we have in Budapest. There are displays on the wall instead of pictures. There were exhibitions, film series – I made a series of Hitchcock-films for example, so-called retrospectives and also wrote film reviews. I worked there for two years, basically that is were I have my professional experience from. That is what impressed our festival director here, Horváth György. So when I got in touch with him he was impressed by my CV and I was lucky to get the job. He was looking for someone and I was also looking for a job, and now I am pleased to work with him.

DailyNewsHungary: And how did you two meet? How did you get to know that he was looking for someone and how did he know that you were looking for a job?
Allan Sørensen: I did not know he was looking for someone. It was me looking for work. My girlfriend is hungarian so I was visiting Budapest and I visited Titanic Festival in 2013 and being a film-fan I watched a lot of movies on the festival. Half a year later, I was looking for work – we were travelling all around Europe and in the winter of 2013/2014 I approached Horváth György without knowing he was looking for someone. But it was a coincidence beause he was! I thought: why not try my luck? I did not expect to end up as the program director. He put me on a – let’s say – trial last year and gave me the chance to put the program together and he liked my work and gave me the job last summer. So actually, this is my second year of being the program director, but it feels like my first year in a sense.

DailyNewsHungary: Why is that?
Allan Sørensen: My „trial-period” was sort of a last minute-project, I put together last year’s program in a very short notice. This year it is different: now I had a whole year to select the films and put together the program. I started to make the lists of potential films and collecting ideas last summer. Then, of course, there are certain factors that I also cannot forget. The rights for example, the principles, policies and goals of the festival and also the budget so that I had to negotiate a lot. For example, we have a policy of not screening anything that has been publicly screened before in Hungary. Therefore, we could not select movies that has been screened on Cinefest in Miskolc before Titanic. Otherwise Titanic would become less exclusive. So the Cinefest meant the real starting point for me in putting together the program.

DailyNewsHungary: The industry is producing films continously. What was the deadline for you to finalize the program? By that I mean: what if at the time you consider the program to be complete, you watch a movie in the last minute that you feel like having to put into the program?
Allan Sørensen: I set the deadline one month before the festival starts. I had to because in this situation the cataloque needs to be printed, the films must get to Budapest, and so on. So if a film comes out a week before the festival it is simply not possible to put it into the program.