István Szabó

István Szabó (Hungarian: [ˈsɒboː ˈiʃtvaːn]; born 18 February 1938) is a Hungarian film director, screenwriter, and opera director. Szabó is one of the most notable Hungarian filmmakers and one who has been best known outside the Hungarian-speaking world since the late 1960s. Working in the tradition of European auteurism, he has made films that represent many of the political and psychological conflicts of Central Europe's recent history, as well as of his own personal history. He made his first short film in 1959 as a student at the Academy of Drama and Film in Budapest, and his first feature film in 1964. He achieved his greatest international success with Mephisto (1981) for which he was awarded an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Since then, most of Szabó's films have been international co-productions filmed in a variety of languages and European locations. However, he has continued to make films in Hungarian, and even in his international co-productions he has often filmed in Hungary using Hungarian talent. In 2006, weekly Hungarian magazine Élet és Irodalom (Life and Literature in English) published an article revealing that Szabó had been an informant of the Communist regime's secret police.