Ferenc Toth
Director/writer Unknown Soldier

With a name like Ferenc Toth one expects to encounter a cavalier gypsy. Instead, the tall, bearded redhead is the sort of person one would pick out of the lineup as the accountant. He actually studied English and political science in college but recoiled from a future in academia in favor of writing gigs he'd mostly like to forget.

Like many of the young American filmmakers presenting first works at the Los Angeles Film Festival, Toth had no formal filmmaking training. He liked movies and fell in with a group of low budget filmmakers in New York City and that led to a lot of odd jobs on the critical favorite Manito three years ago.

"I did whatever they asked me to do. I worked my ass off and they decided I should get an associate producer credit," he says with a smile. "I have no idea what that is."

Toth believes that the rise of digital filmmaking has provided a new generation with the tools to make movies. He looks upon it as a mixed blessing. The costs and risks are low but the instances in which films escape the festival circuit are rare. His first feature, Unknown Soldier, has already played in Miami, Philadelphia and Dallas to good to excellent reviews. Still he doesn't expect his story of a teenager in Harlem left homeless and side-stepping urban pitfalls to be snapped up by a studio specialty division and given a significant commercial release.

"It's best to approach something like this with your eyes wide open," he insists. "Yes, I shot with a digital camera and made the film on an ultra low budget. I wouldn't say that it has no commercial potential just a limited one. Maybe a small company can make it work but if that doesn't pan out no one's going to have to mortgage their life away. Everyone who worked on it can be proud of what they contributed and that people at least saw it at a festival."

Toth says the idea for the film simply came from looking out his window. He shot in the neighborhood he lives in and saw "good kids" confronting difficult situations every day. It was an obvious story but one he felt almost never got told or was presented in sensational terms that didn't reflect the reality of the street.

Virtually all his observations are grounded in a dispassionate, knowing perspective. He has a habit of explaining why something in the film proved a disappointment but stops himself short of casting aspersions on the movie. "What worked for you?" he'll interject and listen to the response to get a measure of the questioner or springboard to another aspect of the film.

"There was no way I could get everything I wanted with the resources at my disposal," he says now. "But I knew that going in and it was important to me to have everything I needed in the script and make sure it was filmed. For me there are a couple of magical or poetic moments that just happened but you can't count on that; you just have to be open to it happening."

Though he was able to hire several experienced actors through an ad in Backstage, he anticipated that the central role of the 18-year-old Ellison would have to be played by someone with little or no acting experience. He chose Carl Louis not simply because the camera liked him but because the young man came across as serious and dependable and even presented notes about the character. The primary filming was done over a period of three weeks but an additional 15 days of pickups and reshoots ultimately were required.

"The best advice I gave Carl was not to act," says Toth. "I didn't need that and he didn't have the training to go in that direction. He has a natural dignity and I could work with that; the script could meet him but you had to have it in order to bend it to the needs of the performer."

Toth isn't sure what he'll do next but certainly gives the impression that what he anticipated in the making Unknown Soldier and what he experienced on the set weren't markedly different. In fact, the things that changed were all improvements.

- by Leonard Klady