You have a very wide range of interests and work, and you do many things that are intertwined. Visual poetry, children's poetry, fiction, poetry performance and I could go on. What would you add to this list above?

Writing plays and novels, teaching... and research is also an integral part of my work, so I guess you could say that learning fits in there. I am forced to use a cliché: the creation of a work of art is partly driven by a child's curiosity and a desire to know.

How do they fit together, what connects them?

I'm theme-oriented, and the genre it becomes is determined by the theme. So they don't have to fit next to each other, because I usually do them one after the other.

They have to fit in me, that is, they have to have the same approach, the same attitude. A kind of medial synergy: that I use the different modalities at the same time when I create the work.

It's interesting that, in fact, it would follow very logically from this that cinema art would be a very logical thing, but I've never been interested in it. Perhaps I have not yet found the subject matter that will necessarily lead to such a work.

Your most recent work is the book, co-written with Krisztina Peer, entitled 'Kibeszélő – Kényes témák lélektana' in which you explore ten difficult topics with the aim of encouraging parents to talk about them, even with preschoolers. The book alternates descriptive sections for parents with poems for children, you wrote the poems. It's not the first time you've worked together, how did it go?

The phenomenon of social taboo was something Krisztina encountered most in her psychology practice, so she had the idea: there are stories to help you, but there are few children's poems that are applied, and none that are both educational for parents and entertaining for children. The first stage of the job was to find the themes, we fought a lot, but what can you expect when your loving spouse becomes an annoying co-author?

Animation is particularly suited to more difficult subjects. Have you thought about the possibility of using animated films to complement these topics?

To tell you the truth, we never thought about it. We don't have the expertise. But I would encourage any animation filmmakers to help the little ones with their creations. In any case, it would be important to have such animations because they would provide a good opportunity to talk to children. The good thing about cinema, especially with children, is that it is good to talk about it. Then the film as a work lasts longer than the screening itself.

What is the most important project you are currently working on and what will we see or read from you next? What can you tell us about it?

Children are at the heart of much of my work. I am writing a novel about a real event in Hungarian history: in 1782, a fatal judicial error resulted in the orphaning of 64 children. I am commemorating them.

What animated films did you like to watch as a child? You have three children, what animated films do you show them, what do they like to watch?

When I was a kid, media literacy was not part of the family culture, so we watched everything. I loved the cheesy Disney movies and the commercial cartoon channels – there was nothing else.

Then my interest in cinema took me down new paths, and the receptive flexibility trained on auteur films allowed me to approach animation more openly.

I want to shorten this unnecessary scroll for my children, so I try to show them non-mainstream films from time to time, in addition to the animated mass-produced films. Usually I don't disappoint them, even if they are surprised by the form and editing of some of the works. I've brought them to Primanima several times for the same reason, and they loved the intimate screenings and the fact that we talked about the works afterwards. Then in the hotel room we watched an episode of 'Walker, Texas Ranger'. So life is full!

What do you think are the most important expectations for an animation for children?

The question is difficult to answer because different expectations need to be assigned to different age stages. If I had to formulate something general, however, I would say: age-appropriateness, well-tuned honesty, discreet aesthetic irritation. By this I mean, broadly speaking, that the work should be in tune with the receptive qualities of the age group, that it should speak boldly about the conflicts of existence and that it should depart somewhat from the bleakness of mainstream formal language. The result is a work that the child can understand and contain emotionally, while reflecting on the world or the human condition, and finding himself confronted with a sensory experience that is both familiar and unfamiliar. Children can only learn by breaking out of the familiar. Sometimes even honesty is unusual.

Do you know what criteria you will be judging on, what you will be looking out for?

Dozens of different criteria can be derived from the above, but I deliberately do not give a list because it is important to start from the works themselves. As is well known, he who has a hammer in his hand sees everything as a nail to be driven in. So it may be that what you judge to be a bad, crooked nail is in fact a perfectly tailored surgical needle.

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Translated by Júlia Kriza