One World Romania, 2014 - Interview with Eszter Hajdu

de Veioza Arte  |  23 martie, 2014

– director of Judgment in Hungary –

In 2008 and 2009, a group of Hungarian right-wing extremists committed a series of attacks on random members of the Roma community in several villages in North Eastern Hungary. Six people, including one child, were killed, with other five being seriously injured at nine crime scenes. The trial against the four suspects lasted for two and a half years before a verdict was announced in August, 2013. Documentary filmmaker Eszter Hajdú filmed the entire process, the result being this gripping courtroom drama – a procedural story which consists almost entirely of trial footage and maps the unfolding of a landmark case in contemporary Hungary.
At times, Judgement in Hungary looks like a carefully choreographed performance meant to warn audiences about the dangers of the escalating tensions between the ethnic Hungarians and the Roma communities: the constant silencing of the victims’ families during the trial, the random or absent crime scene reports, the testimony of a paramedic who admits that he did not notice the gunshot from a child’s forehead and subsequently filled in ‘smoke poisoning’ as the cause of death, the unsettling smiles exchanged between defendants and members of the court suggesting certain sympathies of the latter for the beliefs and actions of the former.