Zoltán Fábri

Actor · Director · Writer

Budapest, Hungary

October 16, 1917

Biography

Zoltán Fábri (born Zoltán Furtkovics; 15 October 1917 – 23 August 1994) was a Hungarian film director and screenwriter. After graduating from the Hungarian College of Fine Arts, Fábri began in the local film industry as a production designer, and directed his first film in 1951. His third feature, Merry Go Round (1956), brought him international acclaim. Fábri's style can be described mainly as 'classical', utilising academic techniques of art filmmaking. His greatest influences were Italian Neorealism and French Poetic Realism, he experimented with narrative and flashback technique in the 1960s–particularly with Darkness in Daytime (1963) and Twenty Hours (1965)–and The Fifth Seal (1976), the latter containing some highly surrealist scenes.