Béla Tarr to Receive Lifetime Achievement Award at Transilvania IFF.24

Legendary filmmaker Béla Tarr, one of the most important and influential auteurs in contemporary cinema, will be the guest of honor at the 24th edition of the Transilvania International Film Festival, taking place June 13–22, 2025, in Cluj-Napoca. Tarr will be presented with the festival’s Lifetime Achievement Award and will hold a special masterclass for young filmmakers and festival audiences at Transilvania IFF 24.

Tickets and passes for Transilvania IFF 24 are available online at tiff.eventbook.ro.

Béla Tarr began his career directing documentaries about ordinary working-class people before making his feature debut at the age of 22 with Family Nest (1977), a film shot in just six days with a cast of non-professional actors. His early work, marked by social realism and political critique, includes The Outsider (1981), which tells the story of a gifted violinist whose life spirals out of control, and The Prefab People (1982), which won a Special Mention at the Locarno Film Festival. Critics have often compared Tarr’s early films to the cinéma vérité style of John Cassavetes — though Tarr himself claims never to have seen Cassavetes’ work.

With Almanac of Fall (1984), Tarr began to define the unique aesthetic that would become his trademark: long, stylized, poetic takes and a haunting atmosphere steeped in existential dread. In 1988, he began his long-standing collaboration with writer László Krasznahorkai on Damnation, the first of several screenplays they would co-write. Their most iconic work, the 439-minute magnum opus Sátántangó (1994), is widely considered one of the greatest achievements in world cinema. Hardcore cinephiles attending the sixth edition of Transilvania IFF were treated to a rare 35mm screening of the film. American author Susan Sontag once declared that Sátántangó was the film she would gladly watch once a year.

Werckmeister Harmonies (2000), co-directed by longtime editor Ágnes Hranitzky, is often hailed as one of the defining films of the 21st century and was screened at the inaugural edition of Transilvania IFF in 2002. Tarr and Hranitzky would go on to co-direct The Man from London (2007), starring Tilda Swinton and premiered in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, and The Turin Horse (2011), which received the Grand Jury Prize at the Berlin Film Festival. Writing in The New York Times, critic A.O. Scott described The Turin Horse as “a rare example of how a work that seems to deny pleasure can, through formal discipline, passionate integrity, and harrowing dramatic power, produce a profoundly elevating experience.” As Tarr announced from the start, The Turin Horse was to be his final film.

With the exception of Sátántangó, Transilvania IFF 24 will screen the complete fiction filmography of Béla Tarr in special one-time-only screenings: Family Nest, The Outsider, The Prefab People, Almanac of Fall, Damnation, Werckmeister Harmonies, The Man from London, and The Turin Horse.

Béla Tarr’s presence at Transilvania IFF 24 is made possible with the support of the National Film Institute Hungary and the Liszt Institute – Hungarian Cultural Centre Bucharest.

The full Transilvania IFF 24 program will be announced at the end of May. The first events are already on sale at tiff.ro.