In the winter of 1942, the Hungarian Army was responsible for a horrible massacre of over 3,000 Serbian and Hungarian nationals, mostly Jews, in the town of Ujvidek (now Novi Sad, Serbia). András Kovács's remarkable film about this incident is both a grim record of the atrocity and a meditation on the memory of it. Soon after the war, four soldiers await trial for their participation in the massacre. As each remembers his particular part in it, casting himself in the most innocent light possible or offering excuses ("I had to follow orders"), Kovács brilliantly details the way in which the concentration on "personal history" can serve to shield one from the larger significance of events. The stark contrast of dark figures on all-white, snow-covered landscapes and the movement between the massacre and postwar sequences keep the viewer off balance, always searching for a fixed position from which to view and judge the events.-Film Society of Lincoln Center