Judit Elek (born 10 November 1937) is a Hungarian film director and screenwriter. She directed 16 films between 1962 and 2006. Her film Mária-nap was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival.

Biography

As a child, she survived the Second World War first in a sheltered house on Pozsonyi Street, Budapest, and then in the ghetto (November 1944 – January 1945). From 1956 to 1961, Elek studied at the University of Theatre and Film Arts in Budapest, in the class of film director Félix Máriássy. Her classmates included Pál Gábor, Imre Gyöngyössy, Zoltán Huszárik, Ferenc Kardos, Zsolt Kézdi-Kovács, János Rózsa, Éva Singer and István Szabó. During this time she was a founding member of the Balázs Béla Studio, a workshop for experimental film. In 1968, Elek made her first feature film, Sziget a szárazföldön (The Lady from Constantinople). From the 1980s onwards, she made historical films such as The Trial of Martinovics and the Hungarian Jacobins (1980). In the 1990s, she shot films with a Jewish theme like Tutajosok (Memories of a River, 1990) and To speak the Unspeakable: The Message of Elie Wiesel (1996). Elek was married to the Hungarian film director Zsolt Kézdi-Kovács (1936–2014). The cinematographer and producer Eli Laszlo Berger Eli Berger (László Berger, born in Budapest, 1970) is their son, known for the films A hét nyolcadik napja (The Eighth Day of the Week, 2006, directed by Judit Elek), Bankster (2016) and Dreams Are an Excuse (2023).

Filmography

Elek wrote many screenplays and directed many films, mostly in Hungarian, including:

Awards

Publications

Her publications include:

Controversy

For the purposes of the film Tutajosok (1990) 14 sheep were spread with a flammable substance, and then, at the order of Judit Elek, were burned alive. 69 scientists from the Jagiellonian University demanded that the authorities forbid Judit Elek entry to Poland. Scientists wrote among others: "No director knowing her own worth would debase herself for using so primitive and cruel methods".

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