
By: Steffon Olsen
Visionary, director, writer, animator, and rebel Demeter Lorant was beamed down to earth from a lesser known planet, in a universe far, far away in 1982. His voracious appetite for evocative, beautiful madness is apparent in each meticulous stroke within his short film masterpieces.
His prolific career launched from the New York Short Film Festival with his short film, “Lag”, which garnered the award for Best Editing. His next films, “The Black and White Royal Flush,” and Urine journeyed into the fascinating and obtuse realm of horror. Lorant would eventually venture into the world of animation while taking on another enthralling adventure directing and producing over 50 music videos for indie bands and some of the biggest metal bands in the world.
In 2010 Lorant founded Full Screen Studio, which would go on to become one of the leading companies in the world for producing visual content for events and creating projection mapping projects throughout Europe.
His affinity for horror films was unstoppable as he assailed the bounds of the independent film world. “Lucky Girls” explored the 70’s Exploitation Cinema and French New Wave Extremism. HIs next creation, “Possessed By Aliens,” was a more light-hearted, family friendly science fiction short about a boy who has to spend a week with his grandmother before discovering that she is possessed by aliens. The film was a huge success on the festival circuit being Officially Selected by more than 40 festivals world-wide and received numerous awards which thrusted Lorant into becoming an internationally recognized force as a uniquely abstract and unpredictable director. His latest offering Sileo, is an apocalyptical animated short about an AI Robot who’s yearning to meet his creator drives him to embark on a fascinating journey across a fallen city to find the god of his program. The animated gem has garnered an award for Best Animated Short at Scorpiusfest 2024 and is currently rocking the international film festival world as it boldly takes on the deepest question of AI.


Scorpius Magazine had the recent privilege of interviewing Lorant, one of the independent film world’s most provocative and innovative visionaries,
Scorpius: What is the most unforgettable and impactful moment from your childhood that compelled you to move in the direction of becoming a filmmaker?
Lorant: I cannot really boil it down to one specific moment, it was a gradual shift towards horror and science fiction. Around the village where I grew up it was quite easy to find dead animals or animal corpses, I always found that fascinating. At the age of around 10 I got introduced to the Steve Jackson / Ian Livingstone fighting fantasy books and I became a huge fan and book collector, even going as far as to map the surrounding forests and swamps as the world of Titan. I was around 12 or 13 when I saw John Carpenter’s The Thing for the first time and it has stayed my favourite horror movie ever since – I think seeing that really opened up the door for me to become a film director.
Scorpius: Of the first films you produced earlier in your career, which was your favorite and why?
Lorant: I’ve made a bunch of amateur films before 2003, even a feature film which I haven’t seen for more than 20 years. It was a great experience but I wouldn’t go back to them, they are no diamonds in the rough for sure. My first really successful attempt at a short film was 2003’s Lag, which is about a guy who wants to kill his wife’s lover, but time shifts and he actually shoots himself – much like you have a lag in multiplayer games and sometimes bullets get delayed. It had a great festival run and got an award gor best editing at The New York Short Film Festival. That was the first time I was really satisfied with what I did and it felt like a real movie.
Scorpius: What inspired you to move in the direction of animation and what can you tell us about where your passion for it began?
Lorant: My father is a painter so I was interested in visual arts since I was born but a still image didn’t seem to cut it for me. I was around 13-14 when I first tried playing around with Autodesk Animator Studio Pro for DOS and I was amazed that I can create animations with it from my own drawings. Until around the age of 17 all I wanted to be is an animator and work on animated films or series, but when I actually got to a proper animation studio where they were doing classical cell-animations I realized that sitting in a dark room for 10-12 hours a day and drawing phases of characters for months might not be for me, so I moved on to live action filming, but animation stayed with me it’s just not my main focus.
Scorpius: You founded Full Screen Studio in 2010, which has become one of the most successful studios in Hungary and Europe. What can you tell us about its evolution and success?
Lorant: In 2009 I started to create special projection mapping animations as an experiment and I submitted one of them to a national mapping contest here in Hungary called Paint Up! – there I’ve actually won the first prize. After that I got a lot of inquiries from different companies and agencies to create mapping animation for them – after a while I had so many projects that making a studio was the only solution to keep up with them – so I’ve founded Full Screen Studio together with Gábor Sz. Nagy, who I used to work with as a VJ back in the day. For the first few years we exclusively worked on events creating animations and we took part in a lot of competitions around the world. We took home awards from Poland, France, Japan and a lot of other places. After 2015 we slowly started to shift our focus to TV productions, creating animated backgrounds for talent and music shows. Right now, we are shifting our focus again, this time to be a full-time film production studio.
Scorpius: What can you tell us about the era in which you were producing music videos for indie bands? Which bands created the most memorable experiences and what can you tell us about them?
Lorant: I started to make music videos back in 2000 and kept making them until around 2010. It was a great era for alternative and underground music in Hungary, the club life was buzzing and a lot of legendary foreign bands were playing gigs in Budapest. I’ve managed to work with alot of amazing Hungarian bands and also some foreign ones. Mostly I tried to stay with music I liked, so I did a lot of videos for rock and metal bands like Blind Myself, Idoru, Thimble or Embers. In 2009 I even managed to go on a small European tour with Machine Head as their VJ, sleeping in the same tour bus with Rob Flynn was an amazing experience as a long time Machine Head fan.
Scorpius: Possessed by Aliens, what can you tell us about it?
Lorant: It was a more light hearted experiment after creating one too many way too dark films. I’m proud of that short film, it looks and feels great, although I’m not sure I will ever venture back to such a family friendly story. Our main actress playing the granny was Márta Holler unfortunately passed away shortly after shooting finished. She had a huge body of work in film, television and theatre. It’s a strange feeling that my short film was her last project, if she can see it from where she is I hope she is satisfied with how the film turned out.


Scorpius: Sileo was a huge hit at Scorpiusfest and is currently making big waves on the international film festival circuit. Where did it originate, and were there any unconscious threads within the film that were inspired by the current, cusp of AI that the world finds itself upon?
Lorant: The basic idea came from the Ship of Theseus thought experiment about whether an object is the same object after having had all of its original components replaced. – I wanted to adapt this to a robot with AI because I thought it would be an interesting base conflict to have a robot be afraid of losing its identity. As the production progressed I tried to put in as many ideas and questions into it as I could without forcing anything. Since the short was made 99% by me it doesn’t even have a storyboard or final script, everything was coming together in my head and drawing it down as a storyboard instead of making the shot itself seemed like a waste of time.
Scorpius: What is on the horizon for you as a filmmaker and where do you see yourself in 10 years?
Lorant: I really feel like my life is shifting right now in a different direction. So far filmmaking was more like a thing I do on top of everything else, but I want to change that to be a full time filmmaker, making genre feature films from low to mid budget, selling them on the world market and actually making money that way. Right now I’m knee deep in the production of my first “real” indie horror feature titled Dreamland Awaits. I’m really optimistic regarding the festival and distribution chances of it, so if everything goes well I might get my next project going pretty soon. My plan is to build a strong indie studio here in Hungary where I want to produce genre movies, horror, sci-fi, action, thriller etc. Some of those will be my movies but I’malso actively looking for co production partners and talented like-minded fellow filmmakers. Hungary is a great place to shoot movies, some of the big Hollywood productions have already realized this from their experiences producing the latest Dune movies, Blade Runner 2049, and many others. Now it’s time for the indies to discover Hungary.
Discover some of Demeter Lorant’s greatest films:
Sileo, Animated Short 2023:
Possessed by Aliens, Sci-fi, 2020:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWGrM06kuPs&t=9s&pp=ygUTcG9zc2
Lucky Girl, Horror, 2016:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBe8fExbK4M&ppygUXbHVja3kgZ2ly
Nothing, Animated Short, 2012:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCm3_Mh25Oo&t=3s&pp=ygUWbm90
Royal Flush, Horror Short, 2004:
https://youtu.be/6gUtkQ2Ag3I?si=kdklcUf0KsAJOu4U
Lag, Sci-fi Short, 2003:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQvLaieG1_0&pp=ygUSbGFnIGRlbWV0ZXIgbG9yYW50
Music videos:
Angertea, Seeds of Hell:
https://youtu.be/2kGi9oTjbn8?si=zk_SOSrbwQeIQsDQ
Embers, Within my Soul:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eN0gg9h2sew&pp=ygUVZW1iZXJzIHdpdGhpbiBteSBzb3Vs
Blind Myself, Go Get a Life:
https://youtu.be/f5Aebp0gJX8?si=n5bJWwz_niEqpfXm
Thimble, Counting…153426