Keswick Film Festival

Synopsis

"Fiercely unsentimental and surprisingly beautiful, Hungarian drama Fateless does the seemingly impossible: it succeeds in portraying the subject of the Holocaust in a new and devastating light.

Based on a novel by Nobel Prize-winning author Imre Kertész, it's the story of a 14-year old Hungarian Jew György Köves, whose unremarkable arrest on a bus in Budapest leads to Auschwitz, Buchenwald and near death in a smaller German labour camp. It's a handsome and large-scale production but don't go expecting another Schindler's List. Lajos Koltai's film is far more ambiguous, disturbing and, ultimately, upliting ... The film's unusually honest tone is established early on ... The acting, especially from young Marcell Nagy, is also superb." BBCi

GOLDEN BEAR nominee, Berlin 2005