‘To discover this need to escape the darkness, one must first descend. One of the themes of Kontroll is descent, in both a literal and figurative sense. Another tale featuring this theme is La Divina Commedia (The Divine Comedy) by Italian writer and poet Dante Alighieri (1265–1321). In many ways, Kontroll is a re-telling of The Divine Comedy, with a message of redemption that can be applied to the individual, and to Hungary itself.’

The award-winning 2018 Hungarian drama Eternal Winter, directed by Attila Szász, based on a screenplay by Norbert Köbli, is a powerful account of the tragic fate of the Swabians in Hungary under the Soviet occupation of the country.

‘The story of the maid Anna Édes is the story of undiagnozed or unrecognized mental illnesses and their consequences, in contrast to today’s societies, primarily in the West, where mental illness is advocated to the point of virtue and people are ‘pressured’ to have mental illnesses as a mark of social status.’

‘Many Jewish citizens from European nations like Sweden are enduring levels of hostility that are non-existent in Hungary. In contrast, Yacov Hadas-Handelsman, the current Israeli ambassador to Hungary, earlier this year named Hungary as one of the safest nations for Jews to live in. Furthermore, the Jewish community in Hungary is not only thriving, but also one of the largest in Europe.’