The Cinema of Béla Tarr is a critical analysis of the work of Hungary's most prominent and internationally best known film director, written by a scholar who has followed Bela Tarr's career through a close personal and professional relationship for more than twenty-five years. András Bálint Kovács traces the development of Tarr's themes, characters, and style, showing that almost all of his major stylistic and narrative innovations were already present in his early films and that through a conscious and meticulous recombination of and experimentation with these elements, Tarr arrived at his unique style. The significance of these films is that, beyond their aesthetic and historical value, they provide the most powerful vision of an entire region and its historical situation. Tarr's films express, in their universalistic language, the shared feelings of millions of Eastern Europeans.

András Bálint Kovács is professor of film studies at the ELTE University of Budapest. He has also lectured at La Sorbonne Nouvelle and the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. He has published primarily on modern European art cinema, and his most recent book is Screening Modernism.

John Cunningham, author of Hungarian Cinema: From Coffee House to Multiplex:
Much of the available commentary on the films of Béla Tarr is often confused and confusing. András Bálint Kovács cuts through this Gordian Knot with a comprehensive but detailed and precise analysis; this is film-writing at its very best.