Sestri Levante, Italy, May 6, 2026 (AFP)
Incoming Hungarian leader Peter Magyar credited a documentary for helping him get elected, saying the film seen online by millions of people helped them "get to know me" despite state propaganda.
"Spring Wind - The Awakening" directed by Tamas Yvan Topolanszky, chronicles the two-year campaign leading up to Magyar's crushing victory in parliamentary elections in early April that forced Viktor Orban out of office after 16 years in power.
Before the film, voters "didn't have the chance to get to know our goals... like my kids, watching the propaganda, they didn't have the chance to meet with the truth", Magyar told journalists at the Riviera International Film Festival in the Italian city of Sestri Levante.
Magyar's appearance -- during which he took no policy questions from reporters -- came just ahead of his swearing in as prime minister Saturday in Budapest.
The incoming premier plans to meet Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni on Thursday.
During production, the future prime minister said he had not been able to tell whether the film would make an impact on voters ahead of elections.
But after the film's first limited theatrical release in Hungary "I saw the result in the movie, the emotions and everything, and in that moment I felt that it could have been an impact, a strong impact," he added.
He said he had later tried to convince the filmmakers to try to show it to a wider audience. It was eventually shown on YouTube for a few days over the Easter weekend and viewed by 3.4 million people, according to producers.
"This (Easter) is the weekend when the Hungarian families are together, the younger generation, the elderly, and I hoped -- and maybe I was right -- that that's the right moment for the family to sit together, to watch the film, and then to speak to each other," he said.
Magyar said he hoped viewers would understand that the film was not about his conservative pro-EU Tisza party, but "rather about the two years of our nation, the past and the possible future of our nation".

Sumber : AFP