Gábor Reisz Returns to Venice With 'Ground Floor,' a Moldy-Wall Political Parable for Hungary

Hungarian director Gábor Reisz, who took the top prize in Venice's Horizons section in 2023, heads back to the Lido this week with Ground Floor (Földszint), a political parable set inside a mould-infested apartment building. The film world-premieres on Thursday, 10 September 2026 in the Sala Giardino, with a follow-up public screening the next morning, as part of the Venice Spotlight section — a programme of up to eight works curated by the festival (La Biennale di Venezia).

The Hollywood Reporter exclusively debuted a clip from the film on 7 September, offering the first public glimpse of Reisz's latest (The Hollywood Reporter).

Ground Floor stars Ádám Tompa as Kristóf, a failed artist who discovers black mould spreading on his wall on the eve of a summer holiday with his wife Vera, according to the Biennale's official synopsis. What begins as a domestic nuisance escalates through the apartment block, and Reisz has described the building as a microcosm of Hungary — the residents' reactions standing in for the country's political fault lines (The Hollywood Reporter).

The supporting cast spans Hungarian and Italian talent: Rodrigo Crespo, Bettina Józsa, Tünde Bacskó, György Gazsó, Juli Kindl, Éva Tímár and Marcello Fonte, the latter an Italian actor familiar to festival audiences from his turn in Dogman (2018). Reisz co-wrote the screenplay with Éva Schulze and Zsófi Reisz-Varga. Kristóf Becsey handled cinematography, while the editing team comprised Reisz, Schulze, Dávid Jancsó and Ilka Janka Nagy (The Hollywood Reporter).

The project is a Hungarian-Italian co-production from Proton Cinema, led by producer Júlia Berkes, and Italy's All At Once, led by Andrea Romeo. Berkes also seeded the core idea: setting the story in an apartment building threatened by mould (The Hollywood Reporter). Berlin-based sales outfit Films Boutique is handling international rights, having confirmed the Spotlight placement on 3 September (Films Boutique / Facebook).

Reisz's previous feature, Explanation for Everything (2023), won the Best Film award in the Horizons (Orizzonti) programme — a competitive sidebar devoted to emerging voices and formal innovation. The prize marked a career milestone for the Budapest-born film-maker, and Ground Floor is his first film back on the Lido since that win (The Hollywood Reporter).

Venice's Spotlight section, introduced as a curated selection rather than a competition, sits alongside the festival's main slate and is designed to spotlight work the programmers want to push into the awards-season conversation. For Ground Floor, that means an early September premiere — with critics, buyers and awards-watchers all in the same Sala Giardino audience on Thursday night.