Noticias

Arbelos, a Los Angeles-based boutique film distribution company, has acquired North American rights to the new 4K restoration of Béla Tarr collaborator György Fehér’s landmark but long unseen Hungarian masterpiece “Twilight” (“Szürkület”). The restored version of the film world premiered in the Berlinale’s Classics strand on Monday. Hungary’s National Film Institute handled the sale.

Fehér, who made only two theatrical features, shot the black-and-white film at the end of the 1980s. Based on the crime novella “The Pledge” by Friedrich Dürrenmatt, it is the story of a retired detective who uses a girl as bait to try to catch a serial killer.

The 4K restoration, using the original 35mm camera negative and magnetic sound tapes, was carried out at Hungary’s National Film Institute. The color grading was supervised by the film’s cinematographer, Miklós Gurbán.

The film premiered in competition at the Locarno Film Festival in...

Hungary’s National Film Institute Filmlab is positioning itself to become Europe’s go-to facility for 35mm post-production, processing and restoration. Working alongside the Nfi Archive — which is moving ahead with an ambitious program of classic film restoration — the Filmlab aims to be a “one-stop shop for digital, analog, VFX, digital restoration and color grading” according to its head, Tamás Bódizs.

Bódizs, who was appointed director six months ago, nine years after he first joined the lab, started his film industry career as a television editor. Film is his passion, he says, and putting Hungary on the map as the go-to location for advanced analog work is a goal the lab has been working towards in recent years.

“This idea is one I share with the former director. We know we can do analog processing, and want to be known for this throughout Europe,” he says.

The lab has spent...

Csaba Káel, head of Hungary’s National Film Institute (Nfi), hopes to emulate an 18th century Magyar hussar hero at this year’s Berlinale European Film Market. Swashbuckling Count Andras Hadik occupied Berlin for one day in 1757 — in return for 300,000 silver thalers, left without destroying the city.

Hadik’s adventure is the subject of one of the films the Nfi will be marketing at the EFM. Káel plans to spend more than a day in Berlin, but also hopes Hungarian producers will leave with handsome sales ledgers after the market — without having to raise a ransom, like the handsome hussar.

It is the first EFM for the Nfi, since it was established in 2020, just as the pandemic hit, closing down the Berlinale’s market until this year.

Káel — an award-winning director who has worked with famous cinematographers, including the late Vilmos Zsigmond — was appointed Hungarian government film commissioner following the death in 2019 of Andy Vajna,...