Bela Tarr Dies: Pioneering Hungarian Director Behind Arthouse Titles Like ‘Satantango’ & ‘The Turin Horse’ Was 70
Hungarian filmmaker Bela Tarr, best known for his dark and distinctive works of feature filmmaking, has died. He was 70.
Tarr’s death was announced this morning on Hungary’s national news agency MTI by filmmaker Bence Fliegauf on behalf of Tarr’s family. The European Film Academy also shared news of Tarr’s death this afternoon in an email. The Academy said Tarr died “after a long and serious illness.”
Born in Pécs, Hungary, in 1955, Tarr began his career working at Balázs Béla Stúdió, one of Hungary’s seminal studios for experimental film, where he made his feature directorial debut, Family Nest (1977). Tarr won the Grand Prix at the Mannheim Film Festival with Family Nest, after which he enrolled in the Academy of Theatre and Film in Budapest.
He graduated in 1982 and went on to establish Társulás Filmstúdió, where he worked until the studio was closed in 1985. Tarr first attracted international acclaim in 1988 with his feature Damnation, which premiered at the Berlin Film Festival and won him the Best Young Film Award at the European Film Awards.
Tarr went on to direct nine features, the final one being Turin Horse (2011), which won the Jury Prize at Berlin. However, he is perhaps best known for his 1994 feature Sátántangó, a 450-minute adaptation of the novel by László Krasznahorkai. The film debuted at Berlin and quickly gained cult status. The film is often referred to as one of the most important titles of the 1990s and is also considered one of the most important pillars of the contemporary slow cinema movement. In 2019, a 4K restoration of the film screened at the 69th Berlin International Film Festival, with Tarr’s approval.
Over the past few years, Tarr has been a visiting professor at several film academies, including Filmakademie BW Ludwigsburg, Le Fresnoy – Studio national des arts contemporains Lille, and FreeSzfe Budapest. In 2023, he received the European Film Academy’s Honorary Award.
