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http://www.ifc.com/news/article?aId=21912

"The District!"

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By Michael Atkinson
IFC News

[Photo: Áron Gauder's "The District!", Atopia, 2007]

A filthy, confrontational, sophomoric animated feature from Hungary, Áron Gauder's "The District!" (I prefer the less prosaic, more punctuative Hungarian title, "Nyocker!") has a surplus of borrowed hip-hop attitude and proudly lowbrow ghetto texture. But it's Gauder's absolutely distinctive visual docket that is ceaselessly arresting. Call it a smash-up between faux 3-D digital fluidity and cutout cartooning and rotoscoped realism and Ralph Steadman-esque satiric caricature — the upshot is hypnotizing, even when the film's wigger material tends toward the idiotic. Gauder captures his actors in a broad variety of facial poses and then animates the characters using these images (much as each character found expression via the interchange of dozens of different heads in the stop-motion "The Nightmare Before Christmas"). But he also embellishes them graphically, distorts them digitally, and then folds them into hectic, multilayered urban tableaux, all of it seething and brawling and swarming like a real city neighborhood as seen through the scrim of very strong microdots.

Which would all make only a scintillating short, not a feature, if Gauder's timing and deftness with multiple action weren't precise and hilarious; watching the background characters' expressions change on the offbeat, from deadpan to rageful to joyous, is often more fascinating than the foreground business, which often devolves into Magyar hip-hop music videos (and accomplished farces of the form, at that). Seeing these 2-D digi-puppets meet gazes is alone funnier than the last five CGI penguin movies. The plot, which moves like a driverless car, involves a gang of Budapest street kids, many of them Rom, deciding to get rich by traveling back to the Stone Age, killing and burying mammoths where their city block will later be, returning and digging for oil. Which they do (they're even inadvertently responsible for continental drift), and the consequences naturally spiral out into an international debacle that ropes in Osama bin Laden, the Pope and Bush II, all of them given a rightful satiric flogging in the process. "The District!" began as an Adult Swim-style series-within-a-series and might represent the most inventive use of digital animation anywhere, and certainly rules the hard drive work being done elsewhere in Europe.

"The District!" (Atopia) will be available on January 15th

http://www.cinemastrikesback.com/?p=2107

Posted on 01.07.08 by David @ 10:40 am
Filed under: Movie Reviews and DVD Reviews and Contributors: David and Rating: Good ??? and DVD Companies: Atopia and DVD Reviews: Hungary and Movie Reviews: Hungary

http://movies.nytimes.com/2007/12/19/movies/19dist.html

The District!

NYT Critics' Pick This movie has been designated a Critic's Pick by the film reviewers of The Times.

A Goofy Scheme to Get the Girl

The District!

Directed By: Áron Gauder
Voices By: László Szacsvay, Gyözo Szabó, Sándor Badár, János Horvath, Judit Jonas, Dorka Gryllus, L.L. Junior, Andrea Roatis
(NR, 87 min.)

There's so much going on in this animated Hungarian feature that if you don't have attention-deficit-hyperactivity disorder going in, you may well develop it by the time you exit the theatre, and I mean that as a compliment. Hungary's first feature-length animated film since the collapse of the Soviet Union is dense with snarky satirical references that run the gamut from current geopolitical figures (Osama bin Laden, Vladimir Putin, and George W. Bush) to Hungary's own prime minister and assorted other key regional politicos, all of whom are portrayed as greed-emboldened, petroleum-crazed maniacs. But at its heart – which is equal parts South Park and Magyar-inflected hip-hop – The District! is a smart, urban riff on Romeo and Juliet. The hyperactive plot follows two Budapest street gangs (their turf is the titular district) and their quest for "money, peace, and pussy." One group consists of reactionary native Hungarian youth led by the street-wise Ricsi (Junior). The other group is Gypsy, the leader of whom is Julika (Roatis), Ricsi's erstwhile love interest. The District! was made the same year Hungary entered the EU, and cash (or the lack thereof and how best to rectify that situation) is the story's thumping, guerrilla crux. It's almost impossible to summarize from hereon in; suffice to say such subjects as time travel, the capture and burial of herds of woolly mammoths, and the subsequent appearance of a subterranean lake of crude oil beneath Budapest – plus the sudden appearance of the late Pope John Paul II – make this one of the most audacious and original animated features yet to come out of the post-Soviet era. The District! was a surprise hit at Fantastic Fest 2006 (where it screened under the title of Nyócker!). Although its quasi-East-meets-West Side Story and freaky mélange of 3-D, CGI-rendered animation and rough-hewn cut 'n' paste style – not to mention the hooker chorus lines and rapid-fire, blink-and-you'll-miss-'em subtitled political satirics – are initially jarring, it really is unlike anything you've ever seen. Much has changed in Eastern Europe in the three years since The District! was made, but, if anything, its attention to the exploitation of newly oil-rich (and previously ignored) countries by superpowers both old and older is more intensely pertinent than ever. And, honestly, where else are you likely to see a teenager's bedroom wall sporting posters of both Rocky and Russian music duo Tatu while an urbanized version of the Bard's balcony scene unfolds underneath?

  Marc Savlov [2007-11-16]

http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/story.html?id=ac343d93-fa49-420c-820c-e23c9ad9d93a

The District

Rating 4

Playing: in Hungarian with English subtitles at Cinéma du Parc.

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Parents' guide: bad animated everything.

- - -

The District has been called an Eastern European South Park. Works for me.

The major difference between the South Park kids and Aron Gauder's acclaimed 2005 Hungarian feature is the difference between crude cut-out characters and astonishingly complex animation at the service of an insanely convoluted hip-hop satirical ode to pimp culture, time travel, oil production and geopolitics, Osama bin Laden's real hiding place and a Romeo and Juliet romance unfolding against rival gang thuggery.

It's a rapper's East Side Story viewed through the prism of prehistoric magic-mushroom stew, as if that clarifies anything. The District has to be seen to be believed, and you really should.

The setting is the wrong side of the Budapest tracks, the intention a mash-up of Shakespeare and agitprop graphic novels. Two families - one Roma, one Hungarian - jostle for control of their 'hood in all the usual ill-gotten ways, greasing the palms of corrupt cops while their kids cause chaos at school.

The District is all about money and power, which is where the oil gambit comes in. Upon learning that crude isn't only the language they speak but the substance that makes the world go around, the kids put their tribal hostilities to one side, sort of, and decide to drill for oil in their own hometown.

The question is how to be sure there's oil underneath these mean streets. The resident brainiac devises a time-travel gizmo, they haul ass back to the Stone Age, dig a big hole, fill it full of woolly mammoths, unwittingly sip some psychedelic stew and pinwheel back to the present to install a few oil rigs and count the cash.

Voilà - instant oil wealth, leading to almost instant trouble, some of which will involve snooping Russian President Putin and his cunning prostitute spies. All of the above and too much more is set to jumped-up, politically incorrect musical numbers, great Hungarian hip-hop (who knew?) and the enduring tale of star-crossed lovers living in a dangerous time.

It's as wild as anything since Richard Linklater's Waking Life, whose flat animation style it borrows. The characters' super-realistic faces are motion-captured from real actors, and indelicately inserted onto puppet-like bodies out of an uncensored MTV. Fans of animation, street culture and fever-dream creativity should be jumping métro turnstiles on their way to Cinéma du Parc right now.

jgriffin@thegazette.canwest.com

© The Gazette (Montreal) 2007

http://www.seattleweekly.com/2007-10-10/film/the-district-hip-hop-hungarians-threaten-president-bush.php

The District: Hip-Hop Hungarians Threaten President Bush

By Brian Miller

October 10, 2007

Montreal-based Atopia Distribution Inc announced today that the North American theatrical premiere of Aron Gauder's multiple award-winning  animated socio-political satire THE DISTRICT ! ("Nyocker!") will be having its North American theatrical premiere at Seattle's Grand Illusion Cinema. The legendary DC art theater wll be screening the film nightly in a one-week engagement that kicks off this Friday, October 12. These screenings will mark the edgy Hungarian film's triumphant return to this city, after a jam-packed festival bow at the Seattle International film Festival, whose organizers referred to it as "an Eastern European SOUTH PARK".

Dates to follow include a 2-week run at Montreal's Cinema Du Parc starting Oct 26, an appearance in late October at the Brattle Cinema's Boston Fantastic Film Festival, a week-long engagement at Austin's celebrated Alamo Drafthouse Cinema commencing November 16, a 3-day rumble at the Winnipeg Cinematheque from Nov 26 and a late-January splash at the Cleveland Cinematheque. More dates will be annnounnced shortly.

Hailed by Ain't It Cool News as "startlingly original". THE DISTRICT! had its North American bow at the Toronto International Film Festival and went on to screen at 59 fests across the world, including Karlovy Vary, Rotterdam International, Philadelphia Film Festival, Austin Fantasticfest, Mar Del Plata, Melbourne International  and Sitges,  winning awards at no less than 13 of them and attaining cult adoration and critical acclaim in every spoken language.

Film Synopsis:  A group of teens from the wrong side of Budapest's tracks band together to make themselves rich by traveling back in time, burying a horde of mammoths under the city's streets, then returning to the present and drilling for oil. As creators of a new oil-producing nation, their scheme draws the attention of Vladmir Putin, Tony Blair and George W. Bush. In the midst of it all, star-crossed teen love is in bloom. This outrageous and visually stunning animated satire plays like an unhinged ghetto updating of Romeo & Juliet smash-filtered through a politically-charged — and politically-incorrect - kaleidoscope of clashing world views and social unrest, complete with musical numbers and a wicked soundtrack of Hungarian hip-hop. You have never seen anything like it.

SF's legendary Roxie Cinema will be unveiling The District as part of San Francisco Indiefest founder Bruce Fletcher's newly minted Dead Channels Film Festival, on Aug 12 and Aug 15. Here's what their programme notes have to say about it:

Hell, yes! The District! delivers a mean sock to the jaw, and offers peculiar glimpses of the mean streets of Hungary. A Gypsy Romeo and Juliet played by pimps, whores, thieves, gangsters and street kids delivers all the sex, drugs, violence you could want. Aron Gauder's wildly bizarre animated debut feature is a continually reeling adventure of absurdist comedy amidst the bleak and desolate life in the ghetto of Budapest. This cherry bomb of a film is completely whacked!

The kids of 'the district' grew up in constant fighting and inter-racial rivalry as their Gypsy, Hungarian, Arab, and Chinese families engage in everyday hostilities. Richie Lakatos attempts to pacify the hostile Csorba family, and win the hand of their lovely daughter Jules. He realizes that money is the way to peace, and that the only way to make real money is with oil (such lovely logic!). So the kids time travel to create their own oil reserves, and have an amusing mushroom trip. They return to exploit their oil, and radically change the District. Soon, their new-found wealth draws unwanted international attention.

The surreal, visually stunning animation pulses with the rhythms of Hungarian Hip Hop (often rendering subtitles unnecessary). It was so overwhelming that I missed dialogue - like whatever was said when the magically tumbling screw slowly spins to earth with its unbelievably perfect silver reflective mercury forming an oscillating mirror. This small masterpiece will blow you away. You'll want to see it again.

- Mike Skurko

http://www.deadchannels.com/the_district.php