Film Review: Judgment in Hungary
07 January 2015
I had little idea what lay in store for me when I returned to the ERRC office for an evening screening of a human rights movie. Up until then it had been a Monday like any other. I’d heard that the movie had won the Human Rights Award for the Best Film at the Sarajevo Film Festival 2014. Beyond that I knew very little about the movie, and had not even had the time to watch the trailer. This was to be a Monday like no other - I will never forget the day I saw Judgment in Hungary.
For those unfamiliar with the subject matter, in 2009 several Roma were killed, including a five-year-old boy in a series of racially motivated attacks on Roma settlements in Hungary. The perpetrators were only identified in 2011 and the trial lasted for two and a half years. Eszter Hajdú, the movie director, recorded the entire 167 days of the trial to show how justice is done in Hungary for the Roma.
When I arrived at the office, the popcorn was already prepared, the drinks and refreshments laid out, and the atmosphere pleasant as we sat back for an evening’s viewing.
The movie opened with hard-hitting and starkly emotional accounts of the lives of those Roma who had been murdered and their families’ struggles for justice. Ten minutes into the movie everybody in the room had stopped eating and drinking. This was no simple movie night. We were witnessing the people’s raw grief as they wept and mourned the deaths of their loved ones, murdered solely because they were Roma. My heart began to beat faster. The more I watched, the more angry I became, seeing the perpetrators and imagining what the Roma victims endured before dying, and comprehending what their families have lived through since the murders of their loved ones. I became even more agitated as the delivery of the judgment loomed. I was so weighed down with sadness that I felt I needed to leave the room. I had to steel myself to watch the movie through to the end for I wanted to see the faces of those who committed such heinous crimes, and to see if there was any sign of regret for what they had done.
One of the saddest moments of the documentary was when the judge invited the wife of one of the victims to make a statement. She was too petrified to come any closer to the perpetrators (in the Hungarian legal system, the perpetrators sit on a bench in front of the judge, and the witness is between them). She was visibly shaking. The judge had to ask the guards to remove the perpetrators from the courtroom so that the woman could come and speak up.
The judgment and sentencing came as no surprise, I was well aware of the case and remember the day when the human rights community in Hungary awaited the announcement of the verdicts. Three of the perpetrators got life imprisonment, and a fourth was sentenced to 13 years behind bars. But what stoked my anger was that even after the judgment was pronounced, the sentenced men were smiling. They showed no remorse for what they had done.
There was little sign of relief among the families affected by the events. It seemed they were all waiting for everything just to be over, exhausted from having to remember and revisit the tragic events in such painstaking detail, and having to look at and share the same confined space for 167 trial days, with the perpetrators whose deeds had torn their lives apart.
My immediate question after watching the movie was: “What am I doing in this country?” Why do others hate us so much? I pay taxes like any other person in this country, why aren’t my rights respected in the same way? I could not sleep well that night, so many scenes from the movie kept flashing back into my mind. But above all I could not stop thinking about the stories of those people, Roma just like me. What I saw, what was depicted in this documentary, could happen to any of us.
I hope this movie will send a strong signal to the majority population and all public authorities that such crimes are not tolerated in a democratic society and that the highest legal scrutiny will be applied to such crimes. It is important that the movie continues to be screened in as many European countries as possible where there are significant Roma populations. And it is important that the movie is widely viewed by both Roma and non-Roma, for people must understand once and for all that we are equal and that we are prepared to pay a high cost to defend our dignity. The many international awards, nominations, and plaudits attest to the high quality of this searing documentary. Let it be a point of departure for renewed and urgent conversations between Roma and non-Roma about what it means to be equal in society, and before the law.
