István Szabó is one of Hungary's most celebrated and best-known film directors, and the first Hungarian to have won an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, for Mephisto (1981). In a career spanning over five decades Szabó has relentlessly examined the place of the individual in European history, particularly those caught up in the turbulent events of Central Europe and his own native Hungary. His protagonists struggle to find a place for themselves, some meaning in their lives, security and a sense of being, against a background of two world wars (Colonel Redl, Confidence), the Holocaust (Sunshine), the Hungarian Uprising, and the Cold War (Father, 25 Fireman's Street, Taking Sides). This is the first English-language study of all his feature films and uses material from interviews with Szabó and his collaborators. Also included are chapters on his formative years, including his time at the famous Budapest Film Academy and the relationship of the state to the film industry in Hungary.

Hungarian cinema has often been forced to tread a precarious and difficult path. Through the failed 1919 revolution to the defeat of the 1956 Uprising and its aftermath, Hungarian film-makers and their audiences have had to contend with a multiplicity of problems. In the 1960s, however, Hungary entered into a period of relative stability and increasing cultural relaxation, resulting in an astonishing growth of film-making. Innovative and groundbreaking directors such as Miklós Jancsó (Hungarian Rhapsody, The Red and the White), István Szabó (Mephisto, Sunshine) and Márta Mészaros (Little Vilma: The Last Diary) emerged and established the reputation of Hungarian films on a global basis. This is the first book to discuss all major aspects of Hungarian cinema, including avant-garde, animation, and representations of the Gypsy and Jewish minorities.

István Szabó is one of the few Hungarian filmmakers to have earned a major international reputation over the past half century. This thoughtful and original book is the first examination of Szabó's contribution to contemporary thought, engaging the troubled history of Europe in the 20th and 21st centuries. István Szabó's importance as a filmmaker lies not only in his attention to film's formal elements but in his deep and ongoing engagement with some of the most urgent ethical and existential questions of our time. With detailed analyses of István Szabó's major films, from his 1960s works to his Academy Award for Best Foreign Film winner, Mephisto, and on through Szabó's last film in 2020, Final Report, Susan Rubin Suleiman focuses on four important questions pertaining to existential choice: to leave home or to stay in a communist country? To collaborate or not with an authoritarian regime? To affirm or to deny one's Jewishness in the face of antisemitism? To seek or to give up on community in the face of individual or national conflicts? Above all, Suleiman addresses the single most important philosophical question that haunts Szabó's work, as it does that of many other Central European intellectuals and filmmakers of our time. That is, how do individuals attempt, through the life choices they make or that are foisted on them, to create a viable self in extreme historical situations over which they have no control?

István Szabó is one of the few Hungarian filmmakers to have earned a major international reputation over the past half century. This thoughtful and original book is the first examination of Szabó's contribution to contemporary thought, engaging the troubled history of Europe in the 20th and 21st centuries. István Szabó's importance as a filmmaker lies not only in his attention to film's formal elements but in his deep and ongoing engagement with some of the most urgent ethical and existential questions of our time. With detailed analyses of István Szabó's major films, from his 1960s works to his Academy Award for Best Foreign Film winner, Mephisto, and on through Szabó's last film in 2020, Final Report, Susan Rubin Suleiman focuses on four important questions pertaining to existential choice: to leave home or to stay in a communist country? To collaborate or not with an authoritarian regime? To affirm or to deny one's Jewishness in the face of antisemitism? To seek or to give up on community in the face of individual or national conflicts? Above all, Suleiman addresses the single most important philosophical question that haunts Szabó's work, as it does that of many other Central European intellectuals and filmmakers of our time. That is, how do individuals attempt, through the life choices they make or that are foisted on them, to create a viable self in extreme historical situations over which they have no control?