Natural Light’s Nedes Nagy at the El Gouna Film Festival

“Nagy recasts historical and political traumas, which resound into the strange realities and shifting narratives of today’s Europe”.

The 5th edition of El Gouna Film festival began with an open-air screening of the powerful Hungarian movie Natural Light’s Denes Nagy, an absorbing, beautifully crafted, thought-provoking addition to the new Hungarian cinema, with Laszlo Nemes’ Son of Saul and Ildiko Enyedi’s Of Body and Soul.

Basing his film on a novel of the same name by Pal Zavada but focusing on just three days of the 20-year tale recounted in the book, documentary director Nagy recasts historical and political traumas, which resound into the strange realities and shifting narratives of today’s world, today’s Europe, or the Hungary of Viktor Orban.

Nagy worked on this project for 6 years, with the support of his school friends the Tamas Dobos cinematographer and Marcell Gero the producer. He spent two years casting for the film, searching for his actors on cow and pig farms in the Hungarian countryside. Eventually giving a first film role to Ference Szabo—with his expressive, melancholic face—as the corporal who finds himself in command of a squad holed up in a tiny rural village after an ambush.

Nagy’s work has largely been solemn, painterly documentaries about rural Hungary and trauma, and it’s easy to appreciate how gracefully he’s adapted both the behavioural eye and the aesthetic rigor of those films to a period setting here. In Natural Light’s obsession with faces and gestures, its patience, and in the delicacy and abundance of its close-ups, there is lot of authenticity in this movie.

As the title suggests, natural light plays an important role in the film and the work by DP Tamas Dobos is impressive. Tamas was previously a stills photographer and here applies an incredible technique that recalls the Thirties and Forties. He's working with antiquated technology, using a glass negative, a very particular handmade process few modern DPs will ever encounter. Lamps were used only in the night scenes.

Natural Light had its world premiere in Berlin and has now chalked up 20 festivals appearances. Here in El Gouna it was very well received. A film with a powerful message for humanity.

By Rita Di Santo