A classic documentary-feature film of the „Budapest School" describes in close-ups a young couple in crisis situations, their circumstances and their breaking up. Irén and her little daughter, Krisztike are squeezed in a suburban room-and-kitchen flat, which they have to share with four relatives of her husband, now in the army. In this impossible small place every tiny problem ends in a scathing quarrel. Irén’s father-in-law makes his son jealous and turns him against her. Irén breaks into a shabby temporary flat, hoping that with the child she will not be dislodged. They are convinced that a flat would solve all their problems. –Libertas Film Festival
Born in 1955, Hungarian filmmaker Bela Tarr began making amateur films at the age of 16, later working as caretaker at a national House for Culture and Recreation. His amateur work brought him to the attention of the Bela Balazs Studios (named in honor of the Hungarian cinema theorist), which helped fund Tarr’s 1979 feature debut Family Nest, a work of socialist realism clearly influenced by the work of John Cassavettes. The 1981 piece The Outsider and the following year’s The Prefab People continued in much the same vein, but with a 1982 television adaptation of Macbeth, his work began to change dramatically; comprised of only two shots, the first shot (before the main title) was five minutes long, with the second 67 minutes in length. Not only did Tarr’s visual sensibility move from raw close-ups to more abstract mediums and long shots, but also his philosophical sensibility shifted from grim realism to a more metaphysical outlook similar to that of Andrei Tarkovsky. After 1984’s… read more
"This is a true story, it didn't happen to the people in the film but it could have."
