'Black Nights' Award Goes to Hungary's Istvan Szabo
Distinguished Hungarian film director Istvan Szabo, 75, will be in Tallinn on November 30 to collect a lifetime achievement award at the Black Nights Film Festival.
Szabo is Hungary's most visible director, being the only Hungarian to have won the best foreign film award at the Oscars, for his film "Mephisto" in 1981, reported ETV.
Estonian film director Peeter Simm said Szabo's movies get only better with time.
Using innovative cinematography and depicting topical issues, several of Szabo's films show how the individual gets stuck in the machinery of empires.
"Hungary was a component of Austro-Hungary and the system of empires is always the same. So these films talk about precisely this, and they are not outdated; they are universal. The style of storytelling or editing or actors' behavior or frames or sound often remind us that many years have gone by, but I am often surprised to find that this is not the case with his work," Simm said.
The Black Nights Film Festival will tonight screen "Mephisto," which tells the stories of actor and theater director Gustav Gründgens and his cooperation with the Nazis. The festival will also feature Szabo's "Kolonel Redl" from 1985 and "Sweet Emma, Dear Böbe" from 1991.