Kurtág Fragments

Director: Nagy Dénes

Silver Bear-winning filmmaker Dénes Nagy spent four years following György Kurtág’s everyday life with his camera. The resulting documentary, produced between 2021 and 2025, far exceeds the conventional boundaries of the genre. The poetic imagery brings to life memories of childhood in the 1930s, the dilemmas of loneliness in old age, fundamental questions of creativity and teaching, as well as the core elements of the human and intellectual background behind the output of a highly unique composer. The film, which also features international stars from the classical music world, such as Víkingur Ólafsson, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Benjamin Appl and Steven Isserlis, constructs a greater whole from small fragments, much like Kurtág’s works do. “What happens in teaching is that we investigate what reality is,” Kurtág says at one point in the film. It is precisely this question that engages Nagy's film too.