Arbelos Films presents SÁTÁNTANGÓ – New 25th anniversary 4K restoration of Béla Tarr’s masterpiece.

One of the greatest achievements in recent art house cinema and a seminal work of “slow cinema,” SÁTÁNTANGÓ, based on the novel by László Krasznahorkai, follows the members of a humble agricultural community living in a bleak and punishing backwater after the fall of Communism. As a few of the villagers secretly conspire to take off with all of the community's annual earnings for themselves, a mysterious messiah, long thought dead, returns to the village and alters the course of everyone’s lives forever.

Shot in stunning black-and-white by Gábor Medvigy and filled with exquisitely composed long takes, SÁTÁNTANGÓ unfolds in twelve distinct movements, alternating forwards and backwards in time, echoing the structure of a tango dance. Béla Tarr’s vision, aided by long-time partner and collaborator Ágnes Hranitzky, is enthralling and his portrayal of rural Hungary beset by drunken revelry, treachery, and near-perpetual rainfall is both transfixing and uncompromising. SÁTÁNTANGÓ has been justly lauded by critics and audiences as a masterpiece and has been restored on occasion of its 25th anniversary.

About the Restoration

For this new digital restoration over 40,000 feet of original 35mm cut camera negative and sound materials were first scanned at 4K on a Northlight film scanner by The Hungarian Filmlab. Arbelos spent over 300 hours repairing countless instances of dirt, debris, scratches, splices, tears, flicker and warps using Digital Vision’s Phoenix restoration software. Several rolls of the Ilford 35mm black and white stock used in the original filming had inherent stock flaws, which caused a flashing of the negative. At director Béla Tarr’s request, these stock flaws have been digitally repaired. As always, as much as possible, the film’s natural grain has been left untouched. The color grading was completed in Los Angeles using DaVinci Resolve and then finalized at The Hungarian Filmlab. A 35mm print at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, California was screened and used as reference for the base color grade in Los Angeles, and director Béla Tarr subsequently supervised and approved the final color grade in Budapest. The original stereo soundtrack has been restored and remastered at 16-bit from the original 35mm magnetic track. A brand-new English subtitle translation accompanies this release.