Experimenting the Bonds of Friendship

‘Triangle’, an English-Hungarian co-production graduation film at the Arts University Bournemouth by Hungarian director Péter Engelmann has attracted international interest. Now, he tells Diplomacy&Trade about this movie described as “a sci-fi pseudo-docu drama exploring the dark realms of the human mind.”

The story follows three strangers who are about to become friends for life, separated only by 36 questions. It is based on a 1997 psychological experiment on the bonds of friendship.
“I had been interested in this topic for a long time and every time this issue came up in the news, I always felt a strong need to do something, but didn’t know what. Then, in 2018, when I was studying BA Psychology, I started to dive into this topic and since I had already studied film and already had the goal to be a filmmaker, I started to think about how I can make a short film about it and try to make a positive impact on the issue. I started to build up the psychological foundations of this idea, I decided on the aspects that I would like to focus on, but at that point I couldn’t find the story and form for it,” the director recalls.
It was only last year, during his MA at the Arts University Bournemouth when due to the things they learned, the encouragement that came from the tutors to experiment and his transformation as a filmmaker in the course, he finally found the story and the form for this idea – and that was also the point when he brought in the psychological experiment by Arthur Aron – and then, Triangle came to life, he adds.

Combining filmmaking with psychology
As to how much the theme of psychology appeared in his professional career before, Péter Engelmann notes that when he went on to study BA Psychology in 2014, he already had a diploma in TV Studies and he was also about to finish Directing, Screenwriting and Editing courses at the Budapest Film Academy. “I knew that I would like to be a filmmaker. However, I always had a strong interest in psychology and I wanted to study it at the highest level, while in the meantime I also thought that by learning psychology I could also be a better filmmaker since I can use it in screenwriting, working with people and so on. In the first week of the course, I came across the theme of ‘pseudo reality’, which then became the main theme of my first short film ‘#HELP’ that I started to write just a few days later, so – having also Triangle in my pocket – I can say the plan has worked well so far.”

Change of plans
Péter Engelmann studied in Britain but shot this film in Hungary. He explains that “in the middle of our second semester the pandemic came and although for the summer when our grad shoots would have occurred the situation became a bit better, it turned out that we couldn’t shoot in the UK. We had two options: waiting for the summer of 2021 or try to shoot it in a different country. For me there was no way to wait a year so – after a short and desperate search for countries where they speak English, since I wrote the script in English – I went back to my home country, Hungary, translated the script into Hungarian and there we could shoot it with no-to-minimal restrictions as the situation was very favorable. People tend to say ‘at the end it was better this way’, but this is truly the situation now, I can only say I’m so glad that I had to shoot this film in Hungary with this wonderful cast & crew. For that matter, although it is a UK graduation film, it was shot in the Hungarian language with only one person being British in the crew, our composer Sam Dinley.”

Favorable feedback
“Fortunately, we got very good feedback so far and the reason it is even better is because it is not just ‘oh I liked your film’, it is not just a classic good reception of the movie – which, don’t get me wrong, it is an awesome thing to hear – but several comments are related to specifically to the topic and how people looked back to their own actions, how it affected them in their own lives and hopefully, it will also give them something for the future. One of my main goals with the film, that I set out way back in 2018, is to try to positively affect real life situations and it’s participants related to the issue of the film. If it only happens to one person, it is already worth it. I’m excited to look forward to the upcoming screenings and feedback. I will try to be at as many screenings as I can in order to be able to interact with the audience,” the director points out.

A versatile artist
Péter Engelmann is listed on the international movie database IMBb primarily as editor, and then in eleven other categories. Explaining this versatility, he says with a smile that “it is a bit annoying that I can’t make it show writer, director first, and then editor, but the truth is the truth, I’m also a working editor and since people are looking for editors more frequently than I can shoot a film as a director, I have more film credits as editor than anything else. I’m also working on a film at the moment as an editor and colorist, so yeah….I urgently need to direct a new film!”
He adds that although his main fields are writing and directing, and then comes editing, he also likes cinematography, color grading and visual effects “while due to several reasons where budget is one of the main ones…I happened to do sound mixing, production design and of course producing in recent years. With Triangle, I decided that I will only do writing, directing, producing and editing and that’s it, but at the end, I had to do the color grading and the visual effects too, but I learned a lot while doing these, so, I don’t mind.”
As regards his plans for the near future, Péter Engelmann highlights that since he finished ‘Triangle’, he started to focus on finding a job, “which, of course, is not an easy thing, but I’m on it. This is really time consuming, but in the meantime, I also try to focus on my future projects: finding the right idea for my first feature and developing a short story (or more) from the Holocaust.”

What the actors had to say

I was glad to work with a topic like this, I think this issue is still very relevant these days, unfortunately and it is very important to talk about it. However, in this film, I liked that the topic wasn’t pushed into our faces from the beginning, it slowly unfolds and we don’t really know what is going on, we aren’t prepared for what is coming. I think this is one of the main strengths of Triangle. (Lili Vetlényi)

From the very beginning, I knew that working with this issue won’t be easy. It’s a tough topic and an even tougher job to elaborate on it in a 20-minute short film. However, Péter was very prepared both during the writing process and working with us, actors. The crew was also great, we could open up to each other and that is very important while we are dealing with such a heavy topic, you just couldn’t do it if you aren’t surrounded by trustworthy people. (József S. Kovács)

This topic is really close to me. Due to my weak eyesight, I was bullied during basketball training when I was a kid – which, of course, was also done to everyone else. They called me blind…well I didn’t get the joke. However, later on, ‘being blind’ was the key for me to learn choreographies more easily as back in time during the basketball training, I was identifying my teammates through their moves, how they handled the ball, how they threw it and so on. Triangle has a very important message for me that I happily pass on through my acting. (Dániel Gaál)