A Hungarian director and actress have waltzed off with awards at the 71st Berlinale, one of the world’s most prestigious international film festivals. Dénes Nagy was named Best Director for his debut work ‘Natural Light’, while Lilla Kizlinger won the Silver Bear for Best Supporting Performance in Bence Fliegauf’s ‘Forest – I See You Everywhere’.
Dénes Nagy is the first Hungarian to win the director’s award in the 71-year
history of the Berlinale. Természetes fény (‘Natural Light’), made with the
support of the National Film Institute, takes place during the war, in an
unrecognisable, swampy forest occupied by the Soviet Union.
Beyond the Eastern
Front, almost 100,000 Hungarian soldiers served behind enemy lines. István
Semetka, a simple Hungarian farmer, is section leader of an infantry unit, searching
the countryside for hidden groups of partisans in obscure Russian villages. The
story depicts the soldiers’ everyday lives from Semetka’s point of view.
The international panel praised Nagy for his masterful, mesmerising filmmaking, and emphasised how he confronts the viewer with the compulsion to choose between passivity and individual responsibility.
A former student of Attila Janisch and Viktor Nagy, Lilla Kizlinger
appears in Bence Fliegauf’s latest film, Rengeteg – mindenhol látlak (‘Forest
– I See You Everywhere’). In this feverish maze of everyday lives and
relationships, the characters try to uncover what might be the biggest secret in
their lives: the other person. Invisible threads connect the six little stories.
Music is provided by underground legend Mihály Víg and István Lénárt, now in
his late nineties.
The Golden Bear for Best Film went to Romanian Radu Jude for Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn. The Grand Jury Prize was awarded to the director of Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, the Japanese Hamaguchi Ryushuke.
