Shot surreptitiously (the working title "Folk Ways" intended to distract official attention), Recsk uncovers a chilling chapter in Hungarian history. In 1950 the Hungarian secret police constructed a secret labor camp, a kind of Hungarian gulag, not far from the village of Recsk. Prisoners arrested by the "Bureau for State Security" (independent from all ministries and a special organ of the Party) and denied a proper trial were interned there. Forced to carry out back-breaking work in a stone quarry, they received a daily ration of just 1,000 calories per head and were subjected to constant physical and psychological torture. Mixing newsreels and other archival footage with dozens of interviews, the film counterpoints the pained memories of prisoners (many of whom had survived Nazi camps) with the remorseless statements of guards. Recsk first reconstructs the erection of the barracks and the camp, then moves on to research the fate of individual prisoners, the reason for their arrest and, finally, describes the daily life in the labor camp, the terrible reality of this inhuman gulag. The rest of the world only learned about this camp after one of the prisoners successfully escaped to the West; it remained a taboo subject even in Hungary right up until 1987. Winner of the European Film Award for Best Documentary, Recsk was made by Géza Böszörményi, himself a prisoner of the camp for three years, and his wife Lívia Gyarmathy.