1945 Film Synopsis: A summer day in 1945, an Orthodox man and his grown son return to a village in Hungary while the villagers prepare for the wedding of the town clerk’s son. The townspeople – suspicious, remorseful, fearful, and cunning expect the worst and behave accordingly. The town clerk fears the men may be heirs of the village’s deported Jews and expects them to demand their illegally acquired property back.
Gábor T. Szántó – Biography
(Budapest, Hungary, 1966) novelist, screenwriter, editor-in-chief of Szombat, Hungarian Jewish magazine. His writings include novels and short story books. Szántó’s writings have been published in German (In Schuld verstrickt, 1999), Russian (Obratnij bilet, 2008) and several other writings in English. His latest novel (Kafka’s Cats, 2014) will soon be published in Turkey.
His latest book 1945 és más történetek (1945 and other stories) came out in 2017.
His short story 1945, Hazatérés (1945, Homecoming) served as the basis of the film 1945 by director Ferenc Török. Gábor T. Szántó wrote the screenplay together with the director.
The film won several awards:
– 67th Berlin International Film Festival Panorama section, 3rd place Audience Award Fiction Film, 2017
– Miami Jewish Film Festival, Best Narrative, 2017
– Titanic International Film Festival, Budapest, Audience Award, 2017
– Washington Jewish Film Festival, Audience Award, 2017
– Chattanooga Jewish Film Festival, Audience Award, 2017
– Berlin Jewish Film Festival, Best Directed Film, 2017
– 34th Jerusalem Film Festival, Yad Vashem Avner Shalev Prize for best artistic representation of Holocaust-related topic, 2017
– 37th San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, San Francisco Critics Circle Award, 2017
– 37th San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, Audience Award, 2017
– 30th Der Neue Heimatfilm, Freistadt, Austria, best fiction film, 2017
– Central European Film Festival, Timisoara, Romania, best film, 2017
– 19th Film by the Sea International Film Festival on Film and Literature, Vlissingen, The Netherlands, the main prize
– Vienna Jewish Film Festival, Audience Award, 2017
– Waterloo Historical Film Festival, Critic’s Prize, 2017