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Hungary’s Oscar© Entry for Best International Feature ‘Those Who Remained’ Directed by Barnabás TóthBarna, as Barnabás Tóth is called, has the rare occurrence of having two films in two consecutive years shortlisted for the Academy Award Nomination. Last year his short film, ‘Cuchotage’ and this year his international feature ‘Those Who Remained’ have been shortlisted.

The road Barna and his producer traveled to get this film made was long and arduous. I spoke with him on the phone from Budapest and again in the Q&a for the Academy members screening held at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills before he and his lead actress, Abigél Szõke, left for Palm Springs Film Festival where the film will show again.

Those Who Remained reveals the healing process of Shoah survivors through the eyes of a young girl in post-World War II Hungary. It is a lyrical story of the...

Hungary has chosen Barnabás Tóth’s “Those Who Remained,” which premiered at the Telluride Film Festival, as its official entry in the Oscars’ International Feature Film category. Variety’s reviewer described the drama as “achingly tender” and “an exquisite, poignantly performed tale.” Menemsha Films will release the film in North America.

Set in Budapest after the end of World War II, the film centers on the relationship between two Hungarians struggling to cope with the aftermath of the Holocaust. Aladár (Károly Hajduk) is a “gentle but haunted” middle-aged doctor, whose wife and sons died in the concentration camps; Klára (Abigél Szőke) – in furious denial over the loss of her parents – is a 16-year-old “force of nature,” who “storms her way into his life,” Variety film critic Alissa Simon writes in her review.

“[The film] taps into a deep well of honestly earned emotion as it tells the story of two traumatized survivors...

Many films deal with the suffering of the Holocaust years, but far fewer focus on those who managed to return from the camps. The achingly tender Hungarian drama “Those Who Remained” fills that gap. Perceptively directed by Barnabás Tóth, . Set in the period between 1948 and ’53, the period drama also takes on the purges of Hungarian politician Mátyás Rákosi’s Communist regime. Following its world premiere in Telluride, this exquisite, poignantly performed tale will be released in North American by Menemsha Films.

After the war, the gentle but haunted Dr. Aládar “Aldó” Kőrner (Károly Hajduk), 42, returns to his ob-gyn hospital practice. His wife and two small boys perished in the camps, and he lives alone, with only his medical journals for company, until Klára (Abigél Szőke), a 16-year-old force of nature, storms her way into his life.

We first meet Klára, nicknamed Sunny, in Aldó’s clinic and she’s definitely not radiating good humor.