Wheelchair accessible | In Hungarian; with English subtitles | 35mm
£9.50 (concession) / £12.25 (full price)

If the ticket or other costs, such as childcare or transport, make this screening unaffordable, please see details of our Audience Access Fund.

Adapted from co-writer, and frequent Tarr collaborator, László Krasznahorkai’s 1989 masterpiece The Melancholy of Resistance, Béla Tarr and Ágnes Hranitzky’s Werckmeister Harmonies depicts the breakdown of social order in a small, unnamed Hungarian town following the arrival of a travelling circus, displaying only a giant stuffed whale, and a mysterious figure known simply as 'The Prince'.

Told through the eyes of the innocent stargazer János, the film immersively depicts the upending of an already-decaying social order and the descent into collective madness that follows. Composed of just 39 long takes, shot by a team of cinematographers, and set to Mihály Vig’s haunting score, Werckmeister Harmonies is Tarr at his most collaborative – offering a hypnotic vision of metaphysical horror that resists direct interpretation while feeling eerily prescient, twenty-six years after its initial release.

Content notes: animal cruelty, violence, non-sexual nudity, strong language

Curated by Joe McFarlane