Director: Béla Tarr
445 mins, Hungary-Germany-Switzerland, 1994, Digital, Subtitled, Black & White
![](https://ifi.ie/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/belatarr_satantango_med.jpg)
A monumental achievement, Béla Tarr’s epic was voted one of the greatest films of all time in Sight & Sound’s decennial poll. The story chronicles a failed collective of farmers, disillusioned and dissolute, who are offered hope by the fabled return of Irimiás, a charismatic, near-mythical figure. Tarr’s formally audacious film borrows the structure of the titular dance, with six steps forward, and six steps back. In this overlapping manner, the collective’s individual fates are revealed in a series of mesmeric, elemental, immaculately composed, and brilliantly photographed sequences.
Screening will include two intermissions.
Contains scenes of animal torture that some viewers may find upsetting.
Notes by David O’Mahony