‘There are no serial killers in this country! Is that clear?’
Strangled – original title: A martfüi rém – is a Hungarian psycho thriller written and directed by Árpád Sopsits, who also stars. It was produced by Gabor Ferenczy and Attila Tozser for Focus Fox Studio.
Having premiered at the Warsaw Film Festival, the film was released in Hungary on 10 November 2016 and is being sold internationally by the Hungarian National Film Fund.
Main cast:
Zsolt Anger, Rita Dévényi, Árpád Sopsits, Gábor Szabó, Zsolt Trill, Attila Tõzsér, Zsófia Szamosi, Károly Hajduk, Mónika Balsai, Zoltán Kovács, Péter Bárnai, Gabor Ferenczy, and Gábor Jászberényi.
Official synopsis:
Based on real-life events, this psycho-thriller is set in the provincial Hungary of the 1960s, when a series of atrocious murders shock the small town of Martfü. A psychotic killer is on the prowl, who continues to slaughter young women while an innocent man is wrongly accused and sentenced for crimes he could never have committed.
A determined detective arrives on the scene and soon becomes obsessed with the case while under pressure from the prosecutor to see a man hang. Stuck in the suffocating social, political and psychological world of socialist Hungary, we soon find ourselves entangled in a web of intricate conspiracy and disturbing drama.
Review:
“Brilliantly directed, most notably thanks to the remarkable work of director of photography Gabor Szabo, with its striking nocturnal scenes and an excellent reconstruction of the times in which these events took place, Strangled is a thriller not without formal qualities and intensity, built on a screenplay that moves forward relatively astutely along three trajectories (those of the innocent man, the investigation and the killer).” Fabien Lemercier, Cineuropa
Filming locations:
Martfu, Hungary
IMDb | Source: Screen Anarchy
