To cast his gruelling war drama, Dénes Nagy combed Hungary’s farms for people ‘with exhaustion in their face’ – then shot it in the Latvian winter. The result? Awards, praise … and fierce criticism
![‘We think we’re good – but we’re weak’: the making of Natural Light, the year’s most harrowing film](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/bbd69e6249820ef08eba2bf738935488e4f32122/770_0_2378_1428/master/2378.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctZGVmYXVsdC5wbmc&enable=upscale&s=b7c3dc43f5c2f8edc0e957a5803f6f5a)
The publicist from the film company won’t be able to make it to the hotel in Leicester Square to introduce me to the Hungarian film-maker Dénes Nagy, whose gruelling slow-burn war drama Natural Light recent won him the best director prize at
Berlin. But he emails to say that spotting Nagy shouldn’t be too difficult: “In the nicest way, he looks like the director of Natural Light.” And it’s true. There is a man in the foyer with an unmistakably auteur-like air: small wire spectacles, intellectual high forehead and a haircut he could have snipped himself in front of a mirror.
Natural Light is an unapologetically serious and beautiful piece of hardcore arthouse cinema. It’s set in the Nazi-occupied Soviet Union in 1943 and follows a unit of Hungarian soldiers, allies of the German forces. Bleakly inscrutable and with very little dialogue, it’s an intense watch. As one review put it, this is a film that “makes demands on its audience”.