Iconic Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr dead at 70
Béla Tarr, the iconic Hungarian film director, has died aged 70.
The news agency MTI confirmed his passing on January 6th, and the European Film Academy subsequently said that he died following a “long and serious illness”.
The academy said in a statement that it “mourns an outstanding director and a personality with a strong political voice, who is not only deeply respected by his colleagues but also celebrated by audiences worldwide. The grieving family asks for the understanding of the press and the public and that they not be sought for a statement during these difficult days.”
The director was most acclaimed for his epic film Satantango, released in 1994, which chronicled the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe over the course of a seven-hour cut.
This formed part of what came to be recognised as Tarr’s trademark cinematic style, highlighting the stories of everyday people, but often under a dark and pessimistic lens.
Having begun his career in 1979 with the film Family Nest, the director coined the phrase “social cinema” to describe this early period of his works. His back catalogue of films spanned from this era through to 2011, when he retired after directing The Turin House.
With Satantango becoming his best film due to its critical acclaim and reverence within scholarly circles, its importance was marked by Tarr’s collaboration with author and Nobel laureate Laszlo Krasznahorkai, whose novel the film had been based on.
This partnership extended throughout Tarr’s career from the 1990s onwards, with a further selection of his most successful films including The Outsider, The Prefab People, and Almanac of a Fall.
Following the release of The Turin House in 2011, the director retired from filmmaking and instead opened a film school named Film Factory. He spent the remainder of his life living between Budapest and Sarajevo.
The Film Factory became known as one of the most prestigious and exciting schools for directorial talent to emerge from all over the world, with talents including Tilda Swinton and Juliette Binoche taking on teaching roles as part of its courses.
Paying tribute on X, the film distributor MUBI France posted a picture of Tarr alongside the years of his birth and death.
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