"It would be great if the Les Arc European Film Festival would grow, become bigger and create a trend," said Szabó.
Hungary is the guest of honour at the festival, taking place in the ski resort in the French Alps. Twelve contemporary Hungarian films are showing outside of the competition and their directors are in the spotlight.
Szabó said he accepted the invitation to chair the festival's jury because he wanted to see how Europe's young directors communicate with their own audiences about themselves and the world. The Academy Award-winning director added that he, too, had started his career with films that aimed to speak to his own generation.
It's important to ask whether a new generation of filmmakers has their own language, then whether this language is intended to send a message or is used "just because it feels good", Szabó said. "When a story speaks about something, then this language is working, but when it isn't about anything, only that we made a film, it comes to nothing."
"Everything depends on what I speak about, to whom I speak and how I say it," Szabó said.
Szabó complained that fewer European films were being shown in Hungarian cinemas and expressed hope that Les Arcs might spark a change. While a few years ago, good European films could still be seen in Hungarian theatres, now the globalised art of film has pushed Russian, Czech, Polish, German and Norwegian films out of the distribution network in Hungary. Now one can see only a few French films, he said.
Prizes will be announced in Les Arcs on Friday. On Saturday, the European Film Academy, on whose board Szabó sits, will announce this year's European Film awards. Szabó had little praise for the films competing for the award.
"They're not as genuine, and, with the exception of one or two films, not as good as European films used to be in general," he said.
Source: Hungarian News Agency (MTI)
