Twilight

For the past three decades, it has been available almost exclusively on poor-quality VHS tapes – this year, the magnificent and bleak Twilight returns after undergoing a thorough restoration that has brought the film back to a nuanced palette of greys and half-blacks. Out of the thick Hungarian fog and torrential rain, fragments of the plot emerge. They are filmed in long, hypnotic shots: someone is killing children, an investigation is underway, and the first suspect does not appear to be the real culprit. Will it be possible to capture the psychopath who haunts the surrounding forests and villages? The cinema of Fehér – the producer of, among others, Sátántangó – will be a treat for fans of Béla Tarr, but Twilight is fully independent and develops its own signature style. Similarly to Ladislao Vajda’s It Happened in Broad Daylight (also screened at the festival), the gloomy Hungarian masterpiece is based on Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s writing – in this case, on the more pessimistic novel version of the story. Fehér transforms a thriller about a paedophile-murderer into a despairing meditation on a decaying world wallowing in sin – a cold reality straight out of a metaphysical horror.

Sebastian Smoliński

György Fehér (1939–2002) was a Hungarian director and screenwriter. He worked mainly in television and the theater, making only two features: Twilight (1990) and Passion (1998). Both are crime films and adaptations of earlier works (the latter of James M. Cain’s often-filmed novel The Postman Always Rings Twice). He co-produced Béla Tarr’s Satantango.

New 4K restoration by the National Film Institute Hungary – Film Archive, supervised and approved by cinematographer Miklós Gurbán.