Join us for the online screening of THE SMELL OF HUMANS – a dramatized adaptation of Ernő Szép’s novel of the same title. THE SMELL OF HUMANS - Győző Ferencz’s new film adaptation of Szép’s novel – offers us a detailed understanding of Ernő Szép’s life and poetry. The film presents an artistic and historically correct picture of an inhuman era’s twenty life-changing days, through an emotional and occasionally resigned story.
The Smell of Humans is going to be available to watch online for 48 hours from 18 November 2022, 7 p.m. in Hungarian with English subtitles. After registration, you will receive a personalised link on 18 November to the TV play.
Please REGISTER HERE until 16 November.
In the autumn of 1944, the 60-year-old Ernő Szép, along with other Jewish men, was called up for labour service. His memoir, The Smell of Humans, is a diary-like description of the long marches, the nights spent at stadiums and brick-yards, the atrocities and cold-blooded murders committed by Hungarian Arrow Cross guards and last but not least the methodical acts of terror that deprived Jews from their human dignity and at the same time made the tormentors lose their humanity.
Ernő Szép’s voice, just as in his previous works, remains smooth and genial, filled with compassion and understanding as he narrates his hardships while maintaining an ironic distance. The sentences of The Smell of Humans are evoking the same humanity vis-à-vis tragedy that makes the poetry so moving. The adaptation includes also the poems and chansons from Ernő Szép.