Keep Quiet (2016)
Director (with Joseph Martin)
93’ Feature Documentary
Csanad Szegedi’s story is remarkable; as vice-president of Jobbik, Hungary’s far-right extremist party, Szegedi regularly espoused anti-Semitic rhetoric and Holocaust denials. He was a founder of the Hungarian Guard, a now-banned militia inspired by the Arrow Cross, a pro-Nazi party complicit in the murder of thousands of Jews during WWII.
Then came a revelation which transformed his life: Szegedi’s maternal grandparents were revealed to be Jewish and his beloved grandmother an Auschwitz survivor who had hidden her faith fearing further persecution.
Keep Quiet depicts Szegedi’s three year journey as he is guided by Rabbi Boruch Oberlander to embrace his newfound religion, forced to confront the painful truths of his family’s past, his own wrong doing and the turbulent history of his country. But is this astonishing transformation a process of genuine reparation and spiritual awakening, or is he simply a desperate man with nowhere else to turn?
*Nominated for Best Documentary Feature at Tribeca Film Festival
*Nominated for F:ACT Award at CPH:DOX
“With far-right nationalist ideologies suddenly a matter of pressing interest to almost everyone, the timing is regrettably ideal for “Keep Quiet.” This fascinating documentary by co-directors Joseph Martin and Sam Blair finds a stranger-than-fiction hook for probing that disturbing global trend, with their protagonist a prominent, unabashedly anti-Semitic leader of controversial extremist groups whose political career derails when it emerges that his own family was Jewish not so long ago — even falling victim to the same Holocaust he and his cronies have denied.
But the redemptive arc of his embracing a new identity here is shadowed by doubt, as many viewers will question whether this turnabout is sincere or merely opportunistic. The result has a certain unreliable-narrator frisson that lends “Keep Quiet” an air of thriller-like drama. ”
“A complex portrait.
The film disturbs the water in a way that is hard to ignore. Whatever you choose to believe about him, Szegedi is a modern man, and Nazi Germany — he explicitly reminds us — was a modern country. The past is never more dangerous than when people think it’s no longer present.
Few movies have so accurately located the most traumatic episode of our not-too-distant past.”
“The filmmakers reveal how a culture can eat another alive and somehow live with itself, how Nazis and neo-Nazis, and, by extension, other far-right parties, can see themselves as something other than monsters.”
“A somber, careful documentary, but despite its measured tone its subject matter is wall-to-wall disturbing.”
