Miklós Jancsó • Hungary • 1969

A bracing thriller told in 12 shots.

In the mid-1930s, a group of Croatian anarchists led by the grim revolutionary ascetic Marko Lazar escape a bungled ambush in Yugoslavia, crossing the dense forests at that country's Northern border in an effort to seek refuge in Hungary.

Winter Wind consists largely of twelve fluid long takes, some as long as ten minutes, and each a completely mapped-out sequence. Miklós Jancsó’s interest is more geometric than geopolitical, eschewing big picture history for micro-social behavior. In a series of sweeping motions, he communicates the abstract conflict between the anarchists’ idealism and reality. Winter Wind premiered at Cannes’s Quinzaine des Réalisateurs and Ghent.