My Twentieth Century

Ildikó Enyedi's first film opens in 1880, on the night Edison demonstrates the electric lamp. Twin girls are born in Budapest and then separated: Lili becomes an anarchist, Dóra a swindler working her way through wealthy men. The Polish actress Dorotha Segda plays both. Their paths cross years later on the Orient Express, around a man played by Oleg Yankovsky who loves them both at once. The film treats the arrival of the twentieth century as a chronicle of wonders: telegraphy, electricity, cinema, passages in which animals speak, scenes where the stars converse. Underneath all that marvelling sits the mass violence to come, which is why the film's gaiety always feels fragile. Tibor Máthé's black and white photography imitates the light of silent cinema. It won the Caméra d'Or at Cannes in 1989 and was later included on a list of the twelve best Hungarian films ever made. Who it is for: viewers who like fabular, formally unconstrained Central European cinema. Who it is not for: anyone wanting a straight narrative, since the film keeps changing place and logic between scenes.