Béla Tarr (1955–2026): Time, Cinema and the Ethics of Attention

Béla Tarr passed away in Budapest on 6 January 2026, at the age of 70. His career produced only nine feature films, from Family Nest (1979) to The Turin Horse (2011), yet few filmmakers of the past half-century have left a comparable mark on the language of cinema.

Born in Pécs in 1955, Tarr began making films as a teenager, working within the Balázs Béla Stúdió, the central laboratory of Hungarian experimental cinema. His debut Family Nest won the Grand Prix at the Mannheim Film Festival and secured his entry into the Academy of Theatre and Film in Budapest. Even at this early stage, his interest was not style but reality, observed without mediation.

Speaking to FRED Film Radio at Berlinale 2019, Tarr dismissed the idea of external “influences” in the conventional sense. “Mostly the life,” he said. “What I see. What is serious and important for me.” Cinema, in his view, was not an abstract construction but a transformation of lived experience into a personal vision shared with others.

Time as material, not decoration

Across his films, Tarr developed a radical formal approach based on long, carefully choreographed single takes, often lasting several minutes. Editing is reduced to a minimum, narrative progression is diluted, and meaning emerges through duration rather than plot.

In the same FRED interview, Tarr argued that mainstream cinema ignores the fundamental conditions of existence. “Our life is happening in the space and in the time,” he said, criticising films that rely on linear dramaturgy and constant explanation. For him, cinema should train the viewer to “listen for the details,” to remain present, active, and exposed to what unfolds on screen.

This insistence on duration is not provocation. It is a way of restoring gravity to experience, allowing gestures, fatigue, weather and silence to carry meaning without manipulation.

Landscapes as forces

Béla Tarr’s films are inseparable from their environments. Rain, wind, mud, and decaying interiors are not atmospheric elements but active forces shaping the characters’ lives. His recurring post-communist Hungarian settings operate as systems of pressure, where social and moral exhaustion becomes visible through repetition and stasis.

Works such as Damnation (1988) and Werckmeister Harmonies (2000) portray communities on the verge of collapse, governed more by conditions than by events. Tarr’s camera does not judge these worlds. It stays with them.

This ethical stance extends to his view of authorship. At Berlinale 2019, he rejected the romantic notion of the filmmaker as “artist,” describing filmmaking instead as physical labour, performed in the cold, in the rain, before dawn. What matters, he insisted, is creating a human situation between people, not producing an object to be consumed.

Sátántangó and the authority of duration

Sátántangó (1994), the 450-minute adaptation of the novel by László Krasznahorkai, remains Tarr’s most influential work. Often cited as a founding film of contemporary slow cinema, it does not merely depict social disintegration. It makes the viewer inhabit it, step by step, cycle by cycle.

When asked by FRED about audiences watching the film in fragments, Tarr reacted with characteristic bluntness. Duration, he argued, is not optional. Opera audiences accept hours of Wagner, theatre audiences sit through uncut Shakespeare, yet cinema is expected to obey arbitrary limits. His objection was not nostalgic, but political: time should not be dictated by industry convenience.

Influence without assimilation

Tarr’s films were never commercially successful, but their impact on arthouse cinema has been profound. Filmmakers such as Gus Van Sant have openly cited him as a key influence, particularly on the “Death Trilogy” (Gerry, Elephant, Last Days), where pacing and camera movement echo Tarr’s commitment to presence. Jim Jarmusch’s cinema shares a similar trust in duration and observation.

What Tarr offered was not a model to copy, but permission. Cinema could slow down without becoming inert. It could reject narrative urgency without losing intensity.

After feature films: liberation as practice

Following The Turin Horse, which won the Grand Jury Prize at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2011, Tarr declared his feature-film work complete. He later explained that repetition would be dishonest.

The final phase of his career focused on education and expanded forms. In 2012 he founded film.factory in Sarajevo, an international school built on an open, non-hierarchical model. As he told FRED, it was “no education, just liberation.” His goal was to protect young filmmakers from market expectations and help them find the courage to be honest.

Béla Tarr leaves behind films that refuse speed, comfort and simplification. They demand time because they believe time is where dignity begins.