The Sixties in Hungary brought a “new wave” of cinema characterized by an intense questioning of events and cinematic approaches of previous decades, the Fifties in particular. István Szabó, one of the three major directors of the Hungarian new wave, is generally considered the most lyrical and intimate in his treatment of the political and social issues confronted in a more sober (though equally innovative) manner by Jancso and Kovacs. Szabó's comments on the release of his latest film still echo the commitments of the filmmakers of the Sixties in a country in which the cinema is an increasingly vital part of intellectual life and thus of historical consciousness: “I don't believe I would be capable of making films set in times or milieus unfamiliar to me. It's already hard enough to deal with historical situations one's experienced at first hand.... The stories I prefer begin around 1939 or 1940. Most of them continue into the present day. Thus, when I talk about hardship, I'm thinking primarily of the Second World War, in Eastern and Central Europe, in Hungary, in Budapest - that is my language. That, alas, is the era in which I feel totally at home. That was my childhood.”
