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Sátántangó

Play trailer Poster for Sátántangó 1994 7h 19m Comedy Drama Play Trailer Watchlist
Watchlist Tomatometer Popcornmeter
100% Tomatometer 27 Reviews 91% Popcornmeter 2,500+ Ratings
In Bela Tarr's seven-hour episodic film, inhabitants of a small village in Hungary deal with the effects of the fall of Communism. The town's source of revenue, a factory, has closed, and the locals, who include a doctor (Putyi Horvath) and three couples, await a cash payment offered in the wake of the shuttering. Irimias (Mihály Vig), a villager thought to be dead, returns and, unbeknownst to the locals, is a police informant. In a scheme, he persuades the villagers to form a commune with him.

Critics Reviews

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Spencer Parsons Austin Chronicle Apr 30, 2020
4/5
You not only make it through but actually enjoy nearly eight hours of rainy, black-and-white bleakness about the failure of a communal farm, and you've earned significant envy in some quarters. Go to Full Review
Dan Jardine Slant Magazine Aug 1, 2010
86/100
The food is delicious...but the portions are SO LARGE! Go to Full Review
Nick Pinkerton Village Voice Oct 20, 2009
Its seven-hour runtime warns off dabblers, the one-screening-a-day bulk defies profit motive, and its protagonists -- Tarr's "poor, ugly, sad, and damned people" -- deny expectations of pleasure. It is also, at times, funny as hell. Go to Full Review
Peter Keough Arts Fuse Apr 17, 2026
With Kieslowskian aplomb, Tarr adopted the writer’s knack for multiple points of view, his cyclical chronology, and his interlinking of individual narratives. Go to Full Review
Julian Singleton Cinapse Jul 12, 2025
Sátántangó is a dance throughout time between disparate moments of human suffering and hunger for control, one that shows us how universally comic and tragic these experiences are. Go to Full Review
Ray Pride Newcity Jul 2, 2024
9/10
How can the tempo of experience be expressed in the tempo of film? Go to Full Review
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Audience Reviews

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H H Feb 9, 2026 An extraordinary accomplishment and well worth seeing. Saw it in a theater. The animal cruelty is excruciating to watch. I was also nodding off by the beginning of the seventh hour. I actually preferred Werkmeister Harmonies as a film, but this is a singular, powerful, bleak, and masterful work. See more Huntin P @PaxVobiscum80 7 hrs ago I can understand suffering for one's own art, but would you be willing to suffer for someone else's? A complete stranger to you. Would you, for example, be willing to sit through a movie that lasts more than seven hours, in which very little of any consequence or interest happens, where the tone is relentlessly downtrodden and gloomy, and where the real reason for the movie's exorbitant length is the agonisingly protracted shots, rather than there being any excess of story or character? Would you, really, in all honesty? This was my second Tarr feature. I fell asleep in the middle, not gonna lie (about lying down), and even having napped, there were still two hours left to go when I awoke. Bela be merciful! A savvy editor, a film student learning the practise of editing, could probably trim this movie by more than half, and lose nothing in the process. Or maybe just set the playback speed to 400%? Arthouse agony. See more Oleksii S @lovecircle13 Aug 15, 2026 There are visually amazing scenes in there BUT the content! F*ck this depressing, pointless, no contrast late abortion of a movie! Why would anyone even make this? And the only people who could possibly rate it high are most likely also Kafka fans and are so lost in their lives that they need to see this monotone 7.5 hours horror just to feel something, anything. See more Erik K @Erimia Dec 15, 2025 I will not call this movie perfect because I feel like the word gets thrown around too often to mean too little. I will put it like this: I would not take away a single second of this movie, neither would I add it. It works as a piece filled to the brim and leaves you dumbfounded. It makes a fulfilling whole with the book as its basis and takes you on a journey you never knew you craved. Absolute atmospheric masterpiece. See more Mo S. @9mr_0 Dec 14, 2025 تعجز الكلمات بوصف هذا الفلم تحفه فنيه بكل المقايس من اخراج وتصوير وقصه و اداء ممثلين وطريقة رواية الاحداث ٧ ساعات من المتعه السنمائية المتواصله ولو صاير ٢٤ ساعه بنفس هذه المتعه ما ينمل شكرا لمثل هذه الافلام الي تخليني اعشق السينما اكثر و اكثر See more Manu M @RT44865677 May 28, 2025 Well first of all it's not a movie maybe it is but only when you push the record button and forget to stop recording... The only reason i'm here writing the minimum words i can type is because maybe i could save someone's 7 hours of life which is more valuable that you waste it with this title and trust me sleep instead No art no messages no philosophy no nothing If some critics like these kinds of recordings i can be sure they are sick and maybe masochist Well i hope people who are not satisfied of anything don't start entering cinema and film industry See more Read all reviews
Sátántangó

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Movie Info

Synopsis In Bela Tarr's seven-hour episodic film, inhabitants of a small village in Hungary deal with the effects of the fall of Communism. The town's source of revenue, a factory, has closed, and the locals, who include a doctor (Putyi Horvath) and three couples, await a cash payment offered in the wake of the shuttering. Irimias (Mihály Vig), a villager thought to be dead, returns and, unbeknownst to the locals, is a police informant. In a scheme, he persuades the villagers to form a commune with him.
Director
Béla Tarr
Producer
György Fehér, Joachim von Vietinghoff, Ruth Waldburger
Screenwriter
Laszlo Krasznahorkai, Béla Tarr
Genre
Comedy, Drama
Original Language
Hungarian
Release Date (DVD)
Jul 22, 2008
Runtime
7h 19m
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