The Witness

Known as one of the greatest satires of communism, and presented as part of LIFF 2021’s Kafkaesque Cinema selection, The Witness was banned for over a decade in Hungary. Ferenc Kállai gives a brilliant comic performance as Pelikán József, an ordinary dike keeper who is caught illegally slaughtering his pig. Spared the typical punishment of hard labour, he instead begins a series of hilariously ridiculous promotions through the communist party, including as the supervisor of a swimming pool and then an orange farm. As events unfold, it seems there may be an ulterior motive for József’s heightened status.

‘Péter Bacsó’s The Witness has achieved a cult status in Hungary. Banned upon its release, it offers a humouristic critique of the Rákosi era and the Stalinist paranoia of the time. Despite exploiting the artistic licence of political satire, many of the absurdist sequences are based on fact: the amusement park covered with pictures of Engels; the socialist orange orchard cooperative and a politician emptying a grammar school swimming pool for his own use.’ I am convinced now, as I was in 1969 when I made the film, that if we want to understand our present, we have to analyse, to look very carefully at our past’ announced Péter Bacsó, ‘József Pelikán, that’s me. I too started as an absolute loyalist in 1945, believing in the socialist utopia and becoming a fighter for its ideal.’

Péter Bacsó