A film about the deported ballet-dancers

Linda Dombrovszky’s Ballerinas shows the ruined carrier of the Kolozs twins, the once world famous ballet-dancers. The movie can be seen at the 13th Verzió International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival on the 12th November in Toldi Cinema, Budapest, writes mno.hu.

The 95 years old Éva Kolozs and Veronika Kolozs became world famous: the identical twins danced on the greatest stages in Germany and all over Europe, but their career got ruined when the war broke out, and they could not continue dancing – says Linda Dombrovszky, director of the film, and she highlights that the heroes of the film fell victim to the communist terror after the war: they got deported. They lost everything apart from each other; work, career, then their home, and finally, love and dreams.

Significant events of the 20th century Hungarian history can be seen while following the dancers’ personal stories. The director says that she shot a subjective documentary in which she focuses on how the twins got through the events.

“The fact, that they told their story in a positive way, and that they did not take the calamity of the past decade as a tragedy, caught us”

– highlighted the director.

The twin could never continue their career after the war was over.

“Ballet-dancing cannot be restarted after years of lapse, and they were not ready mentally either”

– says Linda Dombrovszky.

Another great rapture in their lives was the deportation, when they were exiled from Budapest to Sáp in Hajdú-Bihar County, in 1951. The Kolozs twins were not from a wealthy bourgeois family, they only had a cafe, despite that someone denounced them. „For them it was a bit absurd why they caught somebody’s eye.” – phrased the director.

The once celebrated ballerinas worked on the fields for three years, and they did not get a job for a long time after coming back to Budapest. They were charwomen and janitors later. They could use their German knowledge as typists and secretaries after the abatement of the political situation. “They were well educated, but they were neglected for ten years. Still, they kept their dignity for the whole time.”

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