Underground director

Shortly after seeing the Hungarian film “Kontroll” at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, an impressed Mark Urman -- head of U.S. distribution for ThinkFilm -- went to meet the filmmaker at a nearby hotel bar.

While he waited, Urman wondered what its unknown, first-time writer-director, Nimrod Antal, would look like. After all, the energetic, mordant and sometimes morbid film is completely set and shot within Budapest’s sprawling subway system, where weary and harassed ticket inspectors confront surly and aggressive riders and a hooded killer stalks in the creepy shadows. In a word, it’s different.

“I had imagined a wiry, bespectacled Kafkaesque creature, already half insect,” Urman recalled during a phone interview. “But he walked in wearing a tuxedo, because he was going to his evening screening, and he was this big, strapping, handsome guy. And then he opened up his mouth and that blew me away, because he spoke like an American.”

Indeed, the 31-year-old Antal is an American -- born and raised in Los Angeles as the only child of Hungarian immigrant parents who had fled the Communist regime. He returned to his ancestral homeland at 17 to study at its Academy of Drama and Film, partly in search of roots and partly because of the legacy of Hungarian cinematographers such as Vilmos Zsigmond and Laszlo Kovacs. Although he travels frequently to the U.S., Antal calls Hungary home; he currently has a Budapest apartment and is engaged to a woman from Transylvania.

Of late, Antal has found himself back in the U.S. for several months while ThinkFilm -- which bought the film at Cannes -- rolls out “Kontroll” in the U.S. (it opens in Los Angeles Friday) and while he looks for an American-financed project.

“Kontroll” has been a sensation in Hungary, where it has played theatrically for longer than a year. In just six weeks of release in late 2003, it became that year’s most popular domestic film and has been credited with ushering in a new pop sensibility to Hungary’s filmmaking. It also won critics’ awards and became the country’s official submission for a foreign-language Oscar. (Ironically, Antal wrote his screenplay in English because that was easier for him, although he can speak Hungarian.) During a leisurely but impassioned interview at downtown Los Angeles’ Engine Co. No. 28 restaurant -- a spot chosen because it is near an entrance to our own fledgling subway system, to remind him of his adopted home -- Antal recalled being a bit aimless as a youth.

That changed after he became interested in horror films and his Hungarian American neighbor -- Zoltan Elek, who co-won a best makeup Academy Award for 1985’s “Mask” -- gave him theater blood and latex.

“I really got interested in that,” he said. “And then for my 13th birthday, my father gave me a still camera and I really got into photography. I hung out with a bunch of guys who were film geeks, and we’d miss school to see the latest blockbuster.”

This was supposed to be a lunch interview, but Antal was too excitedly energetic for food. Indeed, he seemed too busy even to have carefully dressed -- the tails of his plaid short-sleeve shirt fell over his black jeans.

The inspiration for “Kontroll” began at the Hungarian film academy, where he had switched from the cinematography track to the directorial one. As a student, he had plenty of time to observe the crowded Budapest Metro in action. There, ridership is based on the honor system -- and the inspectors’ job is to try to enforce compliance.

“They’re like the L.A. meter maid, as far as society’s emotions,” he said. “They’re hated and despised. But as opposed to here, where you can get a $200 ticket for parking in the wrong place, they can fine you some minimal amount of money. It’s so minute it’s almost ironic.

“These guys have verbal and physical atrocities happening to them [courtesy of irate riders], so they’re on edge. I thought, ‘What a great world to base my story in.’ ”

After graduation in 1995, he had a hard time finding meaningful work. But in 1999, two friends from film school enlisted him in an elaborate prank to make trailers for nonexistent films.

Using a small crew and several actors who wound up in “Kontroll,” he shot a preview for a subway-related feature. Afterward, flush with excitement, he wrote his screenplay in 2000 and acquired financing for a film budgeted at $800,000.

“I wanted to make a film cheaply and I knew I could use existing lighting,” he says. “I knew I’d be able to create a very strong production design in a given location without investing thousands and thousands of dollars. And while there were symbolic elements in the film, and certain things I wanted to get off my chest, I was mainly trying to make a [John] Carpenteresque B-movie thriller -- a remake of ‘The Thing’ or ‘The Warriors’ by Walter Hill. I love those.”

Once work began, Antal and his crew and cast shot for 40 days between 11 p.m. to 5 a.m., when there were no passengers.

Antal is still thinking about what he’d like to do next, but he knows he’d like to step up from making underground movies, literally and figuratively.

“I’ve had enough of the Metro system,” he said. “That graphite powder that goes into the air from the brakes is like eating a pencil every day.”