Foglyok

In communist Hungary in the 1950s, under the leadership of Mátyás Rákosi, many families were ostracised and interned because of their bourgeois origin. Even the brother-in-law, a high-ranking official accompanied by a street policeman, is not allowed to leave the apartment again. And so the interned community develops into a flat share of necessity, in which different political leanings condense into an explosive cocktail of opinions. With humour the film questions victim clichés: for example, when the caretaker denounces the head of the family on the basis of a radio from the West, only to be exposed himself shortly afterwards as having been a passionate anti-communist during the war. At the same time Oscar winner Kristóf Deák succeeds in showing the human side of the classic "perpetrators". Both gripping and enigmatic the film discloses one personal drama after another. The imminent internment expected by these individuals, united by necessity, is ever-present. JJ