Best known for his films 'Sátántangó' and 'The Turin Horse', Béla Tarr was one of Europe's greatest filmmakers and shaped a cinematic legacy of despairing beauty.
Legendary Hungarian director, screenwriter and producer Béla Tarr has died aged 70 after a long illness.
The news of Tarr’s death was announced by Bence Fliegauf to the national news agency MTI on behalf of the Tarr family.
Known as one of the leading figures in contemplative, dark and melancholic cinema, his poetic and often politically charged films featured a pessimistic view of the human condition and a streak of pitch-black humour.
Born in Pécs, Hungary, in 1955, Tarr began his career working at Balázs Béla Stúdió, one of Hungary’s seminal studios for experimental film. After several films including Family Nest, Almanac of Fall and Damnation, Tarr gained international recognition in 1994 for his seven-hour, black-and-white odyssey Sátántangó, about the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe. It was based on the 1985 novel of the same name by Hungarian author László Krasznahorkai, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature last year.
Tarr would go on to adapt Krasznahorkai’s novel “The Melancholy of Resistance” with 2000’s Werchmeister Harmonies.
The latter, a bleak and apocalyptic film set during the communist era in Hungary, also gained wide acclaim from critics, but it was Tarr’s final film, 2011’s The Turin Horse, which remains his tenebrous masterpiece.
Also co-written by Krasznahorkai, the psychological drama recalls the apocryphal story about German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s mental breakdown after the whipping of a horse in Turin. It goes on to depict the repetitive daily lives of the horse-owner and his daughter. It premiered in 2011 at the 61st Berlin Film Festival, where it won the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize.
After the release of The Turin Horse, Tarr announced his retirement and moved to Sarajevo, where he started the international film school known as film.factory.
Tarr, who became a member of the European Film Academy in 1997, was awarded the Honorary Award of the EFA President and Board at the 36th European Film Awards in 2023.
The European Film Academy released the following statement: “The European Film Academy mourns an outstanding director and a personality with a strong political voice, who is not only deeply respected by his colleagues but also celebrated by audiences world-wide.”
RIP Béla Tarr 1955-2026
