Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr, a master of European cinema, has died at the age of seventy, a premature age (especially at a time when some of the world's despots, like Putin and Xi Jinping, converse before the Forbidden City about the age-old chimera of immortality, so beloved by tyrants). Tarr's cinema is lyrical and stark, visually hypnotic, and narratively characterized by a masterful command of ellipsis and off-screen space. His stories often appear to be almost non-stories, barely formulated situations. But from minimal elements, his films offer a harsh yet compassionate perspective on humanity and the world.

Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr died at the age of 70 on Tuesday, according to a statement released by director Bence Fliegauf on behalf of the Tarr family to the Hungarian news agency MTI. The director made his film debut in 1979 and his last film was The Turin Horse, premiered in 2012. One of his best-known works is Satanic TangoThe film, shot in black and white and lasting over seven hours, tells the story of the failure and subsequent abandonment of a communist farm. It is based on the novel of the same name by the Hungarian author. László Krasznahorkai, winner of the 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature. Tarr is considered one of the masters of cinema slow and a true icon of modern auteur cinema.

In a time and world dominated by algorithms and the pathological desire to accumulate money, a time that generates a word as frightening as monetizeThe awarding of the Nobel Prize for Literature to the Hungarian László Krasznahorkai has pleased those who still want—we still want—to believe in literature as a place of resistance. Resistance against what or whom, you might ask? Well, resistance against charlatans and charlatans. Against cynics, impostors, opportunists. Of course, against authoritarians and champions of false freedoms.