Beginning with Karlovy Vary world preemed The Wednesday Child (2015) and then the Venice-TIFF preemed Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time (2020), Hungarian filmmaker Lili Horvát has been attracted to themes of female identity, connection and intimacy and looks to be moving towards those themes and more with a sci-fi twist for her upcoming Hungarian/Austrian/French/Bosnian coproduction English-language feature debut. Here is everything we know so far for … Lili Horvát‘s My Notes on Mars.
Word first dropped on the project back in August of 2024 when the film project was lining up for a Spring 2025 shoot. Filming finally began in the summer of 2025 in Budapest, Vienna, and the Austrian Alps with a switcheroo of in the main players.
Margot (Davis), a brilliant young scientist with a troubled marriage, who disappears inexplicably while hiking with her husband Sam (Friend) and a group of friends. A few weeks later, she miraculously reappears the day of her own memorial service. Margot is clearly not the same as before the accident. Nevertheless, Sam sees his wife’s miraculous reappearance as a second chance.
Mackenzie Davis and Rupert Friend topline the film.
Horvát is joined by a massive producer team of Anne Carey, Paradise City’s Emilie Georges and Naima Abed, Obala Art Center’s Mirsad Purivatra and Jovan Marjanovic, Amour Fou’s Alexander Dumreicher-Ivanceanu and Bady Minck. She re-teams with her cinematographer Róbert Maly, while editor Károly Szalai joins the filmmaker for a first collab.
If this does not get showcased at Venice (we would figure the Orizzonti section), it might be because it’s a Golden Leopard competition entry at Locarno.
