Sun in Retrograde

Tilda (29), a translator, stands at an airport baggage carousel waiting for her only luggage — a Monobloc chair. As it arrives, memories surface of a late summer in Budapest, where she returned after years abroad. The memories reveal four relationships—a situationship with Mo, a one-sided friendship with Virág, distant phone calls with her mother with high expectations, and her connection to the city which once was home but now feels like the backdrop of her loneliness. In all of them, Tilda translates herself into whatever shape the situation requires, and disappears a little more each time. The Monobloc chair she finds during lomtalanítás —Budapest's annual junk-clearing ritual — reflects her continuous self-erasure across timelines, until her memory reaches its beginning: her first meeting with Mo, the night she found the chair. She discovers her need to stop performing for others' approval. As a last gesture, she leaves the chair on the baggage carousel and walks toward departures.

Director’s statement
"Over the past decade, I lived in five different countries. Gradually, the language of my internal monologue began to feel foreign to me. I noticed how often I was translating myself — adjusting my tone, behaviour, and emotions to fit what others expected.

Over time, this adaptation became automatic, until I could no longer distinguish between genuine connection and performance.

Sun in Retrograde grew out of this experience. The film follows Tilda, a translator reconstructing memories of a summer in Budapest to understand how she slowly disappeared inside her relationships.

Combining live action with hand-painted 2D animation, the film approaches memory as something unstable and physical: spaces compress, objects reappear in altered forms, and emotional states reshape reality itself."