István Szabó Defends His Role As an Informant for the Hungarian Communist Party
by Andre Soares
The Guardian reports that Hungarian director István Szabó, 67, whose Mephisto won the 1981 Best Foreign-Language Film Academy Award, has been exposed "as a former informant for the communist authorities in 1950s Hungary. His activities coincided with the Soviet crackdown that followed the 1956 revolution and occurred when he was a student at the Budapest Academy of Film." Szabó defended himself from the accusations, saying that "the state security job was the bravest and most daring endeavor of my life because we saved one of our classmates after the revolution of 1956 from exposure and certain hanging."
Besides Mephisto, which stars Klaus Maria Brandauer as an actor who sells out to the Nazis, Szabó’s films include Oberst Redl / Colonel Redl, also with Brandauer, and a Best Foreign-Language Film Academy Award nominee in 1985; the anti-Communist family saga Sunshine / A Napfény íze (1999), which stars Ralph Fiennes, Jennifer Ehle, and Rachel Weisz; and the fluffy Annette Bening vehicle Being Julia (2004).
According to the IMDb, the director is currently working on Rokonok, the tragicomic story of a young man (Sándor
Csányi of Kontroll) whose life is changed after he becomes the attorney general in a small Hungarian town. The film is scheduled to be released later this year.
More on Rokonok at European Films.
Hollywood Foreign Press Association 2005 Golden Globe Award winners and nominees
List of the British Academy of Film 2005 nominees
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