Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr died this Tuesday, director Bence Fliegauf told the news agency. MTI on behalf of the family. He was 70 years old and was considered one of the most important figures of contemporary European cinema.
Tarr collaborated with the 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature writer László Krasznahorkai, and adapted several of his works to film.
Due to this relationship, the tapes were possible Werkmeister Harmonies (2000), adaptation of the novel The melancholy of resistance; and also Satanic Tango, or Sátántangó (1994), based on the novel of the same name, a film lasting more than seven hours and considered his masterpiece.
Béla Tarr
(1955-2026) pic.twitter.com/mXQA4jHWSc— FilmoteCanet Cinema (@CanetCinema) January 6, 2026
Another of his best-known films is The Condemnation (1987).
Known for his black and white feature films, Tarr was first interested in very graphic and dramatic analyzes of society and later explored the distressing and metaphysical reality, reports the Hvg portal, according to the biographical data shared by the agency. EFE.
His work was compared to that of the Italian Michelangelo Antonioni and the Russian Andrei Tarkovsky.
Biography data
Tarr, born on July 21, 1955 in the city of Pécs, began his career as an amateur, and in 1977 he began his directing studies at the Higher School of Theater and Cinema, while later, in the 1980s, he worked at the state film company Mafilm.
During his career he made almost fifty films and was awarded awards such as the Silver Bear in Berlin (2011) for The Turin Horseor the Career Achievement Award from the Tokyo International Film Festival (2024).
After The Turin Horse Tarr retired from directing, although he continued to collaborate with independent theater entities.
In March of this year Tarr received the 2025 Honorary Award from the D’A-Barcelona Film Festival and, according to EFEthe director of ECIB-Barcelona Film School, Pere Alberó, then assured that the Hungarian was the “most important living filmmaker of the moment,” and said that his work remained “a mystery.”
Tarr assured that he did not believe “in the honesty or authenticity of Hollywood cinema,” and stated that the screens “must represent real people, in an honest and sincere way,” according to quotes collected by the Spanish agency.
