Péter Bacsó (6 January 1928 – 11 March 2009) was a Hungarian film director and screenwriter.
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Early life and education
After high school graduation Bacsó wanted to become an actor and later a theatre director, but ultimately decided to try filmmaking. His first job in a film was as an assistant in Géza Radványi's Valahol Európában (Somewhere in Europe) at the age of 19. He continued as a script editor and screenwriter. He graduated at the Hungarian School of Theatrical and Film Arts in 1950. During the 1950s he worked as a script consultant and screenwriter, and directed 33 full-length feature films and TV series.
Career
Bacsó became part of the rebirth of Hungarian cinema scripting the very successful Zoltán Fábri film Sweet Anna (Édes Anna) in 1958. He made his directorial debut with It's Easier in Summer (Nyáron egyszerű), a film about the life of young people at the time, in 1963. He followed up with films that shared the same theme, among them Bicyclists in Love (Szerelmes biciklisták) in 1965 and Summer on the Hill (Nyár a hegyen) in 1967.
He made his most famous film, A tanú (The Witness) in 1969, but it was banned at the time and wasn't released until 1979. The film became a cult classic in Hungary; it is a political satire about the early-1950s Communist regime. The Witness was finally shown in Cannes in 1981.
