I have heard about this documentary a few months before I have actually managed to watch it. I found it impossible to get hold of a screening or a copy while not being in Hungary. Later even in Budapest it took some time until I found a screening which I could get to.
I was somewhat surprised to see that there were only five people watching it at that time, including me. Somehow I expected higher interest for a documentary about the single most important criminal case in Hungary in the last decade.
Being a documentary of a Hungarian court trial everybody spoke Hungarian in it plus it was subtitled in English. Despite being a native Hungarian speaker I occasionally found it hard to fully understand some of the people speaking on record. The English subtitling was mostly accurate with minor omissions of detail present in the Hungarian track.
Most of the runtime was recorded in the courtroom, but do not expect any theatrical court drama. This documentary cannot and does not want to hide the fact that circa 170 days of court proceedings are mostly not dramatic events. I've read that the creators of this documentary have recorded the whole proceedings, so they had access to every minute of it for their cut.
And here comes what I consider a shortcoming of this piece. When I stood up at the end I was convinced that the suspects were violent and militaristic neo-Nazis and the movie showed some evidence that they actually committed the horrible murders they were accused of. But I did not find the list of evidence compiled by the documentary editors compelling and exhausting. It did not question the guilty verdict of the trial for a second though. Since watching the movie I have re-read some news about the trial and found that the actual list of evidence used in the trial was much longer than the movie presented it. Maybe the creators of the movie did not find a good way to present evidence of such complexity.
On the other hand it portrayed the (sometimes controversial) character of the judge quite well. And the quest of justice in his character was reassuring enough to make me believe the case was handled properly and came to a just verdict.
What did I learn from this documentary?
Being Hungarian I'm not surprised to see widespread racism against Gypsies. However the depth of racism turned to light in this trial was stunning. Seeing that not simply the murderers were racist, but everybody, including the friends and family of the suspects and the police patrol and police investigators and even the paramedic being called to one of the murder scenes.
It also showed effects of this racism, like the absolute lack of trust of the Roma people to any and all authorities including the justice system itself. This lack of trust seemed quite well founded, given the policeman who failed to produce a proper record of a murder scene. Or another policeman who literally urinated on some evidence (argh, it took me half an hour to realize IMDb prohibits the word p.ssed but it doesn't tell me which word is prohibited). Or the fireman who suspected that the Roma people themselves set their houses on fire as some insurance fraud when the fire was actually caused by the Molotov cocktails of the attackers. Or the medic who did not try to revive one of the people shot.
The material presented is quite disturbing including a few graphic pictures of people killed.
I hope the creators of this documentary will find some extra channels to distribute this movie, for example online, because I believe it deserves many more viewers.
I was somewhat surprised to see that there were only five people watching it at that time, including me. Somehow I expected higher interest for a documentary about the single most important criminal case in Hungary in the last decade.
Being a documentary of a Hungarian court trial everybody spoke Hungarian in it plus it was subtitled in English. Despite being a native Hungarian speaker I occasionally found it hard to fully understand some of the people speaking on record. The English subtitling was mostly accurate with minor omissions of detail present in the Hungarian track.
Most of the runtime was recorded in the courtroom, but do not expect any theatrical court drama. This documentary cannot and does not want to hide the fact that circa 170 days of court proceedings are mostly not dramatic events. I've read that the creators of this documentary have recorded the whole proceedings, so they had access to every minute of it for their cut.
And here comes what I consider a shortcoming of this piece. When I stood up at the end I was convinced that the suspects were violent and militaristic neo-Nazis and the movie showed some evidence that they actually committed the horrible murders they were accused of. But I did not find the list of evidence compiled by the documentary editors compelling and exhausting. It did not question the guilty verdict of the trial for a second though. Since watching the movie I have re-read some news about the trial and found that the actual list of evidence used in the trial was much longer than the movie presented it. Maybe the creators of the movie did not find a good way to present evidence of such complexity.
On the other hand it portrayed the (sometimes controversial) character of the judge quite well. And the quest of justice in his character was reassuring enough to make me believe the case was handled properly and came to a just verdict.
What did I learn from this documentary?
Being Hungarian I'm not surprised to see widespread racism against Gypsies. However the depth of racism turned to light in this trial was stunning. Seeing that not simply the murderers were racist, but everybody, including the friends and family of the suspects and the police patrol and police investigators and even the paramedic being called to one of the murder scenes.
It also showed effects of this racism, like the absolute lack of trust of the Roma people to any and all authorities including the justice system itself. This lack of trust seemed quite well founded, given the policeman who failed to produce a proper record of a murder scene. Or another policeman who literally urinated on some evidence (argh, it took me half an hour to realize IMDb prohibits the word p.ssed but it doesn't tell me which word is prohibited). Or the fireman who suspected that the Roma people themselves set their houses on fire as some insurance fraud when the fire was actually caused by the Molotov cocktails of the attackers. Or the medic who did not try to revive one of the people shot.
The material presented is quite disturbing including a few graphic pictures of people killed.
I hope the creators of this documentary will find some extra channels to distribute this movie, for example online, because I believe it deserves many more viewers.
