Actors - István Szabó

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	Actors - István Szabó

István Szabó (born February 18, 1938 in Budapest) is both the best known and the most critically acclaimed Hungarian film director of the past few decades. His signature film trilogy consists of Mephisto
(1981, winner of an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film), Colonel Redl (1984, winner of a Jury Prize at the Cannes Festival) and Hanussen
(1988). He made a switch to English-language films with Meeting Venus (1991), Sunshine
(1999), Taking Sides (2001) and most recently Being Julia
(2004), which garnered an Oscar nomination for actress Annette Bening.

His most acclaimed films came from his work with famed Austrian actor Klaus Maria Brandauer, and his ongoing collaboration and friendship with cinematographer Lajos Koltai. In 1996 he was awarded with a Pulitzer Prize for his TV documentary series, "The hundred years of cinema".

Developing story

On January 26, 2006 it got into publicity in a Hungarian weekly newspaper, Élet és Irodalom ("Life and Literature"), that István Szabó was an agent of the Internal Reactionary Prevention Unit of the Communist regime of Hungary during the Kádár-era. His task was to make reports about his classmates in the University of Arts of Theatre and Cinema (he made about 48 of them). He was blackmailed by the authorities with damning evidences against him and like so he was forced to work for them as an agent only one year after the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, Szabó agreed to save himself and revolutionist classmate Pál Gábor from being gibbeted (Szabó says). On February 1, Szabó's latest movie Rokonok ("Relatives") was a huge success, receiving a round of applause when Szabó István was presented to come to stage after its premiere at the 37th Annual Hungarian Movie Review. In this event Lajos Koltai, the cinematographer of this movie (and also for Fateless) pronounced that: Some people are still trying to crush even this community and Let the love keep us together. In February 3 he and his 4 former classmates (whereof Szabó had written reports) held a press conference to speak about their memories of one's life in the post-revolutionist Hungary of the 50's and that they don't feel anger towards Szabó.

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