TRUMP AND ORBÁN AT THE WHITE HOUSE

CONNIE FIELD: DEMOCRACY NOIR (2024)

Hungary's dictatorial Viktor Orban regune, a favorite of Donald Trump and thus a story with ominious implications for us

From a chance encounter a decade ago in Budapest's Freedom Square, the American director Connie Field has approached Hungary's political reality with an eye on her own country. Víktor Orbán, the current prime minister who has been in power uninterruptedly since 2010, with a previous mandate between 1998 and 2002, has openly shown his good relations with the American extreme right and his close relationship with Donald Trump, on the one hand, and Vladimir Putin on the other, with an open desire to bond all three more closely together.

Three independent Hungarian women are heard from here as narrators of events. First, Timea Szabň, member of parliament from Budapest region - government media TV announced her campaign was being funded by the "Cocaine business" and then that she was CIA sponsored and a spy. Second is Niko Antal, an activist nurse who reports here ths stark decline in medical serives under Orbán. Third is Babette Oroszi, a TV news reporter and journalist who reports how the media were crippled by Orbán to maintain his dictatorship by flooding the airwaves with propaganda. These brave women are fighting to expose the corruption and incremental destruction of democracy in Viktor Orbán’s regime, a white nationalist regime that is the envy of authoritarian movements around the world, and admired also by Donald Trump, the crypto-fascist now for a second time serviing as US president.

We learn of the huge Stadium built with government funds for Orbán's best friend whom he has turned into an oligarch, using stones provided for by Orbán's own father, but most of the film is not like processes like this. The main focus is rather on the manipultion of control and the vote.

Opponents repeatedly refer to the ruling politicians as "stealing" from the couhtry and the people. Orbán has changed the constitution to make the country no longer democratic, crush independent media, and cover up his government's corrupt financial practices. The picture can make American viewers cringe. We have been seeing US media drift away from diversity for years, starting with the gradual vanishing of newspapers in favor of a few large consoladated media organs. The US right wing sees Hungary's government as their brothers and the two conservative parties, as we see in the film, travel back and forth and embrace each other at conferences.

Orbán's party, Fidesz – the Hungarian Civic Alliance - is a right-wing populist and national-conservative political party in Hungary led by him. It opehly idetifies itself as illiberal and anti-woke, the latter a term used also increasingly by the ultra conservative movement in the US. It plays to people's right wing tendencies, especially their fear of minorities, homosexuality and LGBT people in general.

We see a contradictory situation: a country subjected to autocracy that is not only part of the liberral democratic European Union, but the largest recipient of EU funds, now main resource used to develop Hungary's illiberal populist policies. While most of the film takes place in Budapest, there is a look also at the rural areas that have become Viktor Orbán's readiest source of support throughout his various terms in office. The absence of a consistent opposition campaign outside the capital has played a role in his continued dominance.

In Field's film, we visit the locals who think Fidesz is great because it brought "order" and "peace". We meet those who believed blocking immigration was great because it "protected" them from foreign invasion. We see hints of Trump's playbook here.

In the 2022 elections, there was hope of achieving a good result thanks to the young politician Péter Márki-Zay, elected by the opposition. But government-controlled media waged an intense smear campaign in which also Timea Szabó was accused of being a CIA spy. It is difficult if not impossible to win as an opposition candidate when there is no variety of opinion in the media.

A coalition of all the opposition parties was able to push out the Orbán-ally mayor of Budapest, and they planned to win control of mayors of the other towns. It would have been nice to see a follow-up on this in the film.

There are recurrant scenes of meetings of the European Union, where Orbán is crtiticized as violating all their rules, electing candidates by gerrymandering and cheating on votes, running the country in a blatantly, boldly illiberal manner. It is shown that Orbán's party bought rural votes of the poor with gifts. A bag of potatoes is enough to win a vote, and vast government funds were allocated to bribe rural voters in just this way. The ruling Fidesz party, having access to unlimited amounts of public funds, could vastly out-spend the opposition.

A depressing but enlightening film.

Throughout her career Connie Field has analyzed different historical events related to politics. She was nominated for an Oscar for her documentary Freedom on my mind (Connie Field, Marilyn Mulford, 1994) a chronicle of the voting registration for women in Mississippi in the sixties. In her acclaimed series of seven feature films Have you heard from Johannesburg (2010), she reflected on the struggle of three generations to end apartheid in South Africa.

Democracy Noir, 92 mins, debuted Mar. 16, 2024 at CPHDOX (Denmark), also showing at SHeffield and Mill Valley and enjoying a French TV release Jul. 2, 2024. Connie Filed has a Metacritic score average of 83% for her other work. Democracy Noir starts at the Roxie Theater, San Francisco, Mar. 12, 2025 with Academy Award-nominated director Connie Field in person after the Mar. 12, 6:30pm show.