One of His Films Clocks In at More Than 7 Hours

The celebrated Hungarian filmmaker Bela Tarr, director of such works as Satantango and The Turin Horse and the recipient of numerous awards for his long and often darkly comic films, has died at 70, reports the AP. In a statement Tuesday, the Hungarian Filmmakers' Association confirmed Tarr's death, writing that "with deep sorrow we announce that, after a long and serious illness, film director Bala Tarr passed away early this morning." During a career spanning decades, Tarr wrote and directed nine feature films, starting with his debut, Family Nest, in 1979 and ending in 2011 with The Turin Horse, which won the Silver Bear Jury Grand Prize at the Berlin International Film Festival that year.

Tarr frequently collaborated with Hungarian author Laszlo Krasznahorkai, who last year won the Nobel Prize in literature. Tarr's films, some of which were adaptations of Krasznahorkai's novels (Satantango and Werckmeister Harmonies), have been awarded prizes at festivals around Europe and Asia, and he received honorary professorships at universities in China. Tarr was born in 1955 in the southern Hungarian city of Pecs, but he lived most of his life in the capital, Budapest. He completed Family Nest when he was only 23. That film won the top prize at the Mannheim-Heidelberg International film fest that year.

His films—the longest of which, Satantango, clocks in at 439 minutes, or more than seven hours—were widely praised as being beautifully shot while often using slow pacing and stark imagery to depict despair and social decay. Often filmed in black and white and defined by long, hypnotic single takes that could last upward of 10 minutes, Tarr's movies depict bleak, hopeless, even dystopian landscapes set during Hungary's socialist era or in the years following the end of Soviet-dominated communism in Eastern Europe. One of his most celebrated films, Damnation, released in 1988, was co-written with Krasznahorkai and, after being positively received on the film fest circuit, helped propel Tarr toward greater international recognition.

His unique style made his work a major influence on art house cinema, including American filmmakers Gus Van Sant and Jim Jarmusch, who've praised his vision. Tarr was at times politically outspoken, criticizing nationalism and populist politicians such as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, as well as President Trump and French far-right leader Marine Le Pen. He was also critical of Hungary's cultural policies under Orban and helped sponsor a group of students at the University of Theatre and Film Arts in Budapest who'd occupied their campus in protest of government measures in 2020. Following the release of The Turin Horse in 2011, Tarr moved to the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo, where he founded a film academy known as film.factory. From there, he produced numerous films by the academy's students and split his time between Sarajevo and Budapest.