The Communists are criminals, says filmmaker Béla Tarr in India

Source: IFFK

World-renowned Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr arrived in Thiruvananthapuram, India, to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 27th International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK) 2022 in Thiruvananthapuram.

The International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK) has been held in Tiruvananthapuram, the capital of the Indian state of Kerala, since 1996. The IFFK’s world cinema section included the movies Zanox – Risks and Side Effects by Gábor Baranyi Benő and The Game by Péter Fazakas.

The filmmaker received the award in person at the Indian film festival which closed on Friday. In this year’s programme, which ran from 6 to 16 December, the melancholic worlds of Béla Tarr also included Family Fire Nest, Free Pawn, Damnation, Werckmeister Harmonies, The London Man and The Turin Horse.

In an interview to a Malayalam daily, he gave his views on communism, India Today NE says.

“My country once embraced communism. The same country later taught me to hate communism,”

the daily quoted him as saying.

Tarr also revealed that he was a staunch communist until he was 16, but later realised that the leaders he once worshipped were fake communists and decided to quit.

“So far, I have not seen any good communists. The leaders use communism to disguise their criminal activities and human rights violations,”

he added.

“Most of them don’t know the difference between communism and Marxism. I don’t know the situation in Kerala,” he said.

Béla said autocracy and communism came from the same feather and questioned whether he had ever come across a country that could have developed through communism and socialism.

“I have not seen anyone. You could probably say China. But China is a capitalist country,” he said.

He also added that there was a long list of countries that had suffered humiliating downfalls because of communism. Countries such as Poland, Hungary, East Germany and Russia are on this list.

Later, Béla said that the Kerala government had awarded him the Puraskaram not for politics but for his movies.