Renowned film director and producer László Vitézy has died at the age of 83, his son said on Facebook on Friday. Born in 1940, Vitézy’s early films explored the reality behind the facade of Socialism. Peacetime (Békeidő, 1979), featuring the life of the head of a producers’ cooperative in a village with dwindling population, is reported to have reached 1.5 million people despite censorship. Other films included The Unveiling (Leleplezés, 1979), Red Earth (Vörös föld, 1982) and Reformgondolatok, 1984.
Later in life, he adapted three of author Zsigmond Móricz’s works for the screen, as well as films like Black Burdock (A fekete bojtár, 2015), The Actress (A szinésznő, 2017) and The Singer (Az énekesnő, 2022). He was awarded the Balázs Béla Prize in 1980, the Sára-Csoóri Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2021, and the Kossuth Prize in 2023. His works attracted numerous awards: among them he received the Grand Prize of the Mannheim Film Festival for Peacetime in 1980 and the award for best television film director at the Los Angeles Hungarian Film Festival in 2018.