Fateless (2005)

92% of critics liked it
(63 reviews)
64% of users liked it
(13,605 ratings)

One young man's devastating voyage through the Holocaust sets the stage for this powerful drama. Gyorgy "Gyurka" Koves (Marcell Nagy) is a 14-year-old Jewish boy living in Hungary when the Nazi pogroms begin sweeping through the country. Gyura's father (Janos Ban) has his business taken away from… More One young man's devastating voyage through the Holocaust sets the stage for this powerful drama. Gyorgy "Gyurka" Koves (Marcell Nagy) is a 14-year-old Jewish boy living in Hungary when the Nazi pogroms begin sweeping through the country. Gyura's father (Janos Ban) has his business taken away from him not long before he's taken away to a concentration camp, and as he's led away, Gyura agrees to his father's request to look after his stepmother while he's gone. However, Gyurka takes a bus rather than the train to work the following morning, believing it to be safer, but before it can reach its destination, police stop the vehicle and take the Jewish passengers into custody. Gyurka is sent to Auschwitz, but is later transferred to Buchenwald, and finally to Zeitz; at each stop the teenager is witness to greater and greater horrors, as different varieties of torture and violence are introduced with each passing day, until his emotions begin to wear away. When American troops finally liberate Zeitz, Gyurka has been shocked into a placid serenity, and when he returns to the wreckage that is Budapest, his ravaged body and ghostly calm go mostly overlooked by the other survivors attempting to rebuild. Sorstalansag (aka Fateless) was adapted from a novel by Imre Kertesz, a Nobel Prize-winning author who is himself a survivor of the Nazi death camps. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

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Rating, Runtime: R, 2 hr. 16 min.
Directed By: Lajos Koltai
Written By: Imre Kertesz
Genres: Art House & International, Drama

In Theaters: Jan 6, 2006 Limited
On DVD: May 9, 2006
Studio: ThinkFilm

Critic Reviews

Ty Burr, Boston Globe
Fateless looks man's inhumanity to man square in the eye and pronounces it standard operating procedure, and that may be the greater horror.
Kerry Lengel, Arizona Republic
A reflection of how its main character comes to experience reality, as one small moment between what came before and whatever horror or happiness is yet to come.
Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Many of the images in Fateless are familiar, but they're presented so unsparingly, so uncloaked by emotion, they become freshly potent.
Bruce Westbrook, Houston Chronicle
Epic in scope and imagery, the film is a haunting look at mankind's capacity for inhumanity, as well as survival.
Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune
The film is on a level just slightly below Schindler's List and The Pianist, and only because Koltai is a less powerful, practiced director than either Steven Spielberg or Roman Polanski.
John Monaghan, Detroit Free Press
With its first-person approach, Fateless joins other classic films about the Holocaust (Shoah, Schindler's List) by vividly portraying an event that can seem remote as the number of eyewitnesses shrinks each year.
Cole Smithey, ColeSmithey.com
"Fateless" is an essential film in the canon of holocaust film because it vividly tracks the specific brand of hatred that torture and genocidal murder inures.
Anton Bitel, Eye for Film
In cutting through the conventional cliches of Holocaust presentation to a more singular truth, Gyuri defies viewers to refuse him the license to tell his own story as he himself saw and felt it, rather than as others might prefer him to tell it.
Enrique Buchichio, Uruguay Total
Una película de sobrecogedora belleza que se las arregla para arrojar nueva luz sobre un tema trillado y recurrente.
Lewis Beale, Film Journal International
Masterfully directed, acted and shot, this is world cinema at its absolute finest.
Robert Roten, Laramie Movie Scope
Haunting, affecting and beautiful in its own way, although slow-moving and overlong.
Dennis Schwartz, Ozus' World Movie Reviews
In a long list of Holocaust films, this sublime one is well-worth seeking out.
Jeffrey Chen, Window to the Movies
Plays out as a constant tug-of-war between what makes it trite and what makes it unique, although what makes it unique has the better chance of sticking with you.
Peter Bradshaw, Guardian [UK]
Is the survivor entitled to ordinary human happiness -- or is this human emotion an act of disloyalty and diminution? These questions are a vital part of this outstanding film's dark and sombre power.
Robert Hanks, Independent
Perhaps the fault lies more with Ennio Morricone's lavish, emotionally bullying music, which cancels out all the reticence and nuance of the script.
Steve O'Hagan, Empire Magazine
We're meant to see the camps with a naive adolescent eye, but director Koltai misjudges his material, and his fastidious paletting and highly orchestrated set-pieces are curiously low-impact; beautiful where they should be beastly.
Rachel Cameron, BBC
Fiercely unsentimental and surprisingly beautiful, Hungarian drama Fateless does the seemingly impossible: it succeeds in portraying the subject of the Holocaust in a new and devastating light.
Trevor Johnston, Time Out
Relatively few films touching on the Holocaust are worthy of their subject; this one is.
Ed Gonzalez, Slant Magazine
Unconventional Holocaust film sees its image possibly stripped of its lucidity for video, but it's an appealing presentation nonetheless.

Read all 19 critic reviews

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Featured Audience Ratings

Cynthia S

This film is hard to watch, but the performances are profound and the cinematography is breath taking. The depths of suffering seem to be limitless, and thiis film portrays that brilliantly. I do not recommend this film for children. It is a mature work that is completely disturbing.… More
This film is hard to watch, but the performances are profound and the cinematography is breath taking. The depths of suffering seem to be limitless, and thiis film portrays that brilliantly. I do not recommend this film for children. It is a mature work that is completely disturbing. While similar films capitalize on the Holocaust brutality, this is a different perspective regarding the erosive effects of the endless, dehumanizing routine upon the psyche. How anyone was able to survive one of these camps, then return to normal society, is beyond me.
Daniel P

There can be beauty anywhere - even in the Nazi death camps. This film is filled with touching moments, some of the rawest I've seen in film, and is an interesting take on the coming-of-age story: what if you spent your teens in a concentration camp? How would you look back on… More
There can be beauty anywhere - even in the Nazi death camps. This film is filled with touching moments, some of the rawest I've seen in film, and is an interesting take on the coming-of-age story: what if you spent your teens in a concentration camp? How would you look back on it?
Sarah G

it's not every day I see a hungarian film nor have I ever heard of an Hungarian film but this film will certainly make me find more Hungarian films. This is a film which probably would not be done in a similar way in an English peaking film. Many of the scenes where certainly… More
it's not every day I see a hungarian film nor have I ever heard of an Hungarian film but this film will certainly make me find more Hungarian films. This is a film which probably would not be done in a similar way in an English peaking film. Many of the scenes where certainly something I haven't seen before in an english speaking film, perhaps even a Hollywood movie. Perhaps telling from a boy's point of view is why I belive it's such a special piece of cinema, unlike something I've ever seen.
William G

The cinematography's warm, the characters cold, and the territory familiar.
Daisy M

<a href="http://tinypic.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://i32.tinypic.com/27yrew0.jpg" border="0" alt="Image and video hosting by TinyPic"></a> for disturbing images, nudity, language. I have seen many movies… More
<a href="http://tinypic.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://i32.tinypic.com/27yrew0.jpg" border="0" alt="Image and video hosting by TinyPic"></a> for disturbing images, nudity, language. I have seen many movies about Holocaust, but this Hungarian one, Fateless is quite impressive.Making a Holocaust movie is a challenge, because the director must struggle to maintain the scenes powerful, and not to be comparing with other Holocaust movies. Fateless, had this, and it showed us that we who were not there in the camps, can never imagine how that was like. It had little dialogue, but still it was a story that was watchable and had an affect on the viewer.