My 20th Century
Bucking all trends, Ildikó Enyedi’s Cannes Caméra d’Or-winning film takes us back to New Year’s Eve of 1900. Dóra and Lili, twins separated from each other in their infancy, land back in Hungary at the same moment as the twentieth century arrives. Dóra is an easy-going swindler, Lili is an anarchist. They get off the train but remain separated. The strange aristocrat Z, a slave to science, technical innovations and ideas of the new century, gets to know the two girls separately, who – fused into one – represent for him the ‘perfect WOMAN’.
Awards and selections:
1989 – Cannes Film Festival – “Camera d’Or” for the Best First Film
1989 – Edinburgh Film Festival – Special Prize 1
1989 – Las Vegas Film Festival – Special Prize, Author Prize
2018 – Berlinale Classics – Official Selection
Ildikó Enyedi (b. 1955) began her career as a concept and media artist. She was a member of the art group Indigo and the Balázs Béla Studio, the only independent film studio in Eastern Europe before 1989. She then turned to film directing and screenwriting. Enyedi’s first film "My Twientieth Century" won the Cannes Camera d’Or at Cannes film Festival in 1989 and was chosen as one of the 12 Best Hungarian Films of All Time and selected among the 10 Best Films of the Year by The New York Times. In 1994, "Magic Hunter" was selected in competition at Venice Film Festival. Her 1999 feature "Simon Magus" won Locarno’s Special Jury Prize, and 1997’s "Tamas and Juli" won Belfort’s Grand Prix. In 2017, Enyedi’s former feature, "On Body and Soul", won the Golden Bear at the Berlinale Film Festival and has been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. "The Story of My Wife" was competed in this year Cannes Film Festival and is her eight full-length fiction feature film.
Selected: Vakond (Mole, 1987), Az én XX. századom (My Twentieth Century, 1989, PÖFF 2021), Simon mágus (Simon, the Magician, 1999), Teströl és lélekröl (On Body and Soul, 2017), A feleségem története (The Story of My Wife, 2020)
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