The Exam

Budapest, Christmas 1957. The uprising of 1956 has been put down and the state does not trust its own security officers. A decision comes down: everyone is to be put through a loyalty test, and nobody is to know they are being tested. An experienced officer is set to follow a young man he trained himself. Both of them are under watch. Péter Bergendy's film tells Hungary's turn back to a Stalinist order through everyday detail: listening devices, reports, who informed on whom. János Kulka and Zsolt Nagy take the leads. The tension comes not from guns but from mistrust; while everyone watches everyone, nobody can say anything to anybody. The sets and the lighting make the period look cold.