Blessed Mary

Blessed Mary is an award winning script of the 8th edition of Berlin Art Film Festival which is written by Csilla Toldy. The script is the story of a young girl who becomes pregnant while still believing that she is a virgin. Her mother suspects that she was drugged and raped and fights for an abortion. When Mary develops healing powers, half of the world thinks she is mad, the other half wants to be helped by her. Mary believes that her miraculous conception, the baby is effecting healing, but when she starts to have flashbacks, reality catches up with her. After a torturous conflict of conscience she finally finds out that her real power lies in her talent, in her singing voice.

Csilla Toldy was born in Budapest. She escaped from socialist Hungary as a teenager in 1981. After an odyssey in Europe she finally settled and worked as a translator in Germany. Csilla has an MA in creative writing for film and television from the University of Sheffield. In 1995, she moved to the UK with a writer's visa to work on films. Her scripts were supported by British Screen, The European Commission and Northern Ireland Screen and she won the Katapult Prize and The Special Prize of the Motion Pictures Association of America.

Csilla moved to Ireland in 1998. “The Bloom Mystery” her documentary researching the Hungarian origins of Leopold Bloom in Joyce’s Ulysses was screened internationally. Her short fiction and poetry have appeared in numerous UK and Irish literary magazines and anthologies, such as Southword, The Black Mountain Review and anthology, The Incubator and Ink Sweat and Tears. Her poetry collection Red Roots - Orange Sky was published by Lapwing Publications Belfast in 2013, followed by an anthology of short fiction, poetry and memoir in 2015. Most recently, Csilla’s poetry was anthologised in “Mothers and Sons” by Demeter Press, Canada. Her short story collection, “Angel Fur and other stories” was published by Stupor Mundi in Scotland in 2019. In 2020 she was awarded a public art commission by the Executive Office of Northern Ireland and she created a video poem for Holocaust Memorial Day shot in Hungary, France and Ireland. Her short stage play, Bananas! about social issues was performed at the East Side Arts Festival in Belfast and it was directed by Alistair Livingstone and made into a short film in 2021. Csilla lives in Rostrevor, Co. Down.