People Of The Mountains (1942)

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Shot almost entirely on location (in the harshest conditions imaginable), using mostly non-professional actors, a devotion to realism and the details of daily life, and an indictment of the prevailing conditions, this was a groundbreaking film. Sz ts auspicious debut was, however, refused a distribution license by Nazi minister for Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels and condemned as 'Communist propaganda'. In spite of this, the film went onto to win a major prize at the 1942 Venice Film Festival and later cited as an early model for the post-war Italian Neorealism movement, praised by Vittorio De Sica and Cesare Zavattini among others. A powerful, elemental vision suffused with poetic lyricism and a romantic anti-capitalist zeal, People of the Mountains is the jewel of Hungarian cinema of the period.