SÁTÁNTANGÓ - film screening

This special screening of Sátántangó is held in memory of Béla Tarr, honoring one of the most singular and uncompromising voices in the history of cinema.

A landmark of world cinema, Sátántangó is not merely a film. It is an experience. Directed by Béla Tarr and adapted from the novel by László Krasznahorkai, this monumental work unfolds over seven and a half hours in hypnotic black-and-white, inviting viewers into a world where time slows, meaning deepens, and moral certainties dissolve.

Set in a decaying collective farm on the Hungarian plain after the collapse of a failed social experiment, the film follows a small community caught between hope and despair, manipulation and faith. Through long, unbroken takes and an uncompromising visual language, Tarr transforms Krasznahorkai’s dense, philosophical prose into a cinematic rhythm that mirrors the novel’s circular structure: moving forward only to return, again and again, to the same questions of power, belief, and human frailty.

Both bleak and darkly poetic, Sátántangó has become one of the most influential films in cinema history, revered by filmmakers and critics alike for its radical form and moral intensity. This screening offers a rare opportunity to encounter the film as it was meant to be experienced: collectively, patiently, and in full.

What Makes It Special?

After retiring from filmmaking in 2011, Béla Tarr left behind a body of work that had begun, early in his career, in the tradition of documentary realism. Over time, he gradually developed his own distinctive authorial universe and found long-term collaborators who shared his vision. The decisive turning point came in the mid-1980s, when he encountered the writing of László Krasznahorkai, and in particular the novel Sátántangó. Although the adaptation could not yet be realized, their collaboration resulted instead in Damnation (1988), a film in which all the essential elements of Tarr’s later opus magnum were already present.

Sátántangó likewise depicts a hopeless, apocalyptic world that closely resembles our own reality, yet ultimately appears as the projection of a particular existential condition. While Damnation filtered this sense of stagnation through the subjectivity of a single protagonist, the seven-hour, chapter-divided structure of Sátántangó multiplies perspectives, presenting the same events repeatedly from different points of view.

The film faithfully mirrors the tango-inspired structure of the novel, often incorporating its dialogues and monologues - transformed into voice-over narration - almost verbatim. Although Krasznahorkai’s book is just over 300 pages long, the 432-minute adaptation remains remarkably true to its source. Tarr translates the author’s distinctive verbal intensity into the language of images: through extremely long takes, the viewer is able to immerse themselves in the characters’ world in much the same way as a reader moves through Krasznahorkai’s winding, unbroken sentences. What matters here is not conventional plot, but the repetition of everyday, monotonous actions, and the rhythm of images and sounds through which a particular state of being is revealed.

Director: Béla Tarr
Screenplay: Béla Tarr, László Krasznahorkai
Director of photography: Gábor Medvigy
Runtime: 432 minutes (7 hours 12 minutes)
Language: Hungarian with English subtitles