Director

Dénes Nagy

Hungary, France, Germany, Latvia | 2021 | 103 min | Hungarian, Russian

• Producer Marcell Gerő, Sára László
• Production Company Campfilm
• Screenplay Dénes Nagy
• Cinematography Tamás Dobos
• Editing Nicolas Rumpl
• Sound Márton Ágh
• Cast Ferenec Szabo, Tamás Garbacz, László Bajkó, Gyula Franczia
• Contacts

  Luxbox
  

  festivals@luxboxfilms.com

About the Film

On the frontlines of war, the first sacrifice is human conscience. This political accusationis the core of Hungarian director Dénes Nagy’s creed, which won him the Silver Bear for Best Director at the 2021 Berlin International Film Festival.

Declaring a moral stance that condemns the failures of human responsibility as atrocities are committed and crimes are covered, Nagy disregards whether these failures are complicit or are outcomes of negligence.

In Natural Light, Sergeant Semetka witnesses the extermination of peasant families in the devastated forests of the Soviet Union in 1943, ordered by the Hungarian leaders allied with the occupying Nazi forces on a dubious pretext of some of them belonging to the resistance.

Though his chivalry doesn’t stop the madness, Semetka attempts to keep himself from adding to the bloodshed.

Amidst Semetka’s conflict between his agonies, his silence, and his duty as a soldier who must carry out orders, Nagy relays tales from a hellish journey full of injustice, gratuitous murder, and regrets.

Through calculated insight, Nagy doesn’t depict battlefields. Instead, he depicts elaborate scenes that follow a creative optical accuracy, portraying landscapes of horrific annihilation through pure natural light and long, slow shots that alarm viewers to extreme lengths regarding horrors, in which innocent souls are lost.

The film presents three illuminating scenes—the commander’s confession about the first true horror experience he witnessed as a child, Semetka taking the killer’s photo in front of a burning barn full of screaming women, old men, and children, and the hero finally heading home in a trailer immersed in the first sunlight of his new life.

As Nagy summarizes the cycle of cursed blood that stained his country’s history with shame, Natural Light heralds the artistic birth of a distinguished director, whose unique print will be greatly awaited.

Ziad Khuzai