Bacsó Péter
Péter Bacsó (1928–2009) was a Hungarian film director and screenwriter, one of the most prolific and politically engaged filmmakers of the late socialist period. After a youthful ambition to act and direct in theatre, he took his first film job at nineteen as an assistant on Géza Radványi's Somewhere in Europe and graduated from the Hungarian School of Theatrical and Film Arts in 1950. He made his directorial debut with It's Easier in Summer (1963), but his most famous film, The Witness (A tanú, 1969) — a black political satire on the show-trial era of early-1950s Stalinism in Hungary — was banned for a decade and only released in 1979, eventually becoming a cult classic. He directed thirty-two features in all, was awarded the Kossuth Prize in 1985, and was named a Master of Hungarian Cinema in 2004.