Return to Epipo
There was a summer camp in Hungary in the 1980s where children could escape, for a few weeks, the regulated world of state socialism and become citizens of an imaginary state, Epipo. The memory of Epipo is full of contradictions: some remember it as the best time of their lives, while others recall painful memories, offensive remarks, humiliations, and even worse, abuse. Together with the director, former citizens of Epipo try to find an explanation for the actions of the charismatic camp leader, Pál Sipos, and to decipher how this closed, mystical world functioned.
Director Judit Oláh completed her MA in film studies at Eötvös Loránd University in 2014. Parallel with her academic studies in film theory and history, she attended the faculty of filmmaking. During her studies, she worked on several films in different positions. With the support of the Hungarian National Film Fund, she made her first short film Beauty Queen in 2015, which was screened at several festivals. Since then, apart from working on television documentaries and live-action shorts, she has been working on her first feature-length documentary, Return to Epipo. Judit is a Nipkow fellow. She participated in the Archidoc, Eurodoc and Dok Incubator workshops, and the Midpoint 2019 short-film script development training program. She is a script-consultant trainee at Midpoint Feature Launch 2020.