Hungarian director Béla Tarr is to receive the Honorary Award of the European Film Academy president and board at this year’s European Film Awards.
Béla Tarr is the sixth filmmaker to receive this recognition. Previous recipients were Manoel de Oliveira, Michel Piccoli, Michael Caine, Andrzej Wajda and Costa-Gavras.
EFA said it wished to pay special tribute to an “outstanding director and a personality with a strong political voice, who is not only deeply respected by his colleagues but also celebrated by audiences worldwide.”
Tarr made his feature debut in 1979 with Family Nest which won the Grand Prix at the Mannheim Film Festival.
In 1982, The Prefab People received a special mention in Locarno. This was followed by the chamber drama Almanac Of Fall (1984) and by Damnation, which was nominated for the first European Film Awards (1988).
One of Tarr’s most well-known films is Sátántangó, a 450-minute adaptation of the novel by László Krasznahorkai, which featured in the Berlinale’s Forum section in 1994 where it won the Caligari award. It exemplifies Tarr’s style, his films following their own rhythm, taking time in long black-and-white shots.
In the 2000, Werckmeister Harmoniak won the Grand Prize at the Hungarian Film Week. The Man From London played in Competition in Cannes in 2007. Two years earlier, the festival celebrated Tarr as “Foreign Cineaste of the Year”.
His 2011 feature The Turin Horse won the Jury Grand Prix Silver Bear and Fipresci award in Berlin and was nominated for the European Film Awards.
Tarr is the honorary president of the Hungarian Filmmakers’ Association and a member of the Széchenyi Academy of Letters and Arts. An early supporter of the Sarajevo Film Festival, he founded a film school there in 2013 and has lived in the city since 2016.
Tarr will attend the European Film Awards ceremony in Berlin on December 9 to accept his award.
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