Cold days = Hideg napok [NTSC]

Considered one of the most important Hungarian films of the 1960s, “Cold Days’ courageously tackled the theme of the Hungarian role in World War II, a previously taboo subject within Hungarian society. The film is based on events that occurred in the winter of 1942, when the Hungarian Army massacred over 3,000 Serbian and Hungarian nationals, mostly Jews, in the town of Ujvidek (now Novi Sad, Serbia). Kovacs’ remarkable film about this incident is both a grim record of the atrocity as well as a meditation on the memory of it. The film is structured around the recollections and self-justification of four men involved in the massacre as they await trial in 1946. Stark black and white photography conveys an atmosphere of coldness and remoteness, visually linking the emotional detachment and denials of the perpetrators with stark images of the massacre itself. Based on the short novel by Tibor Cseres. Cast includes Zoltan Latinovits, Ivan Darvas, Adam Szirtes and Ibor Szilagyi.