# László Nemes

László Nemes (born Nemes Jeles László; Hungarian:; 18 February 1977) is a Hungarian film director and screenwriter. His 2015 debut feature film, Son of Saul, was screened in the main competition at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Grand Prix. He is the first Hungarian director whose film has won a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film. Son of Saul is the second Hungarian film to win the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. In 2016, Nemes was a member of the main competition jury of the 2016 Cannes Film Festival.

## Early life

Nemes was born in Budapest as the son of a Jewish mother and the Hungarian film and theatre director András Jeles. He moved to Paris at the age of 12. Nemes became interested in filmmaking at an early age and began filming amateur horror films in the basement of his Paris home. After studying History, International Relations and Screenwriting, he started working as an assistant director in France and Hungary on short and feature films. For two years, he worked as Béla Tarr's assistant during the filming of The Man from London.

## Career

After directing his first 35-mm short film, With a Little Patience, in September 2006, he moved to New York to study film directing at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. Beginning in September 2011, he spent five months in Sciences Po Paris as part of a scholarship program arranged by the Cinéfondation, where he and Clara Royer developed the script for Son of Saul.
In 2012, they continued intensive work on the screenplay for seven months at the Jerusalem International Film Lab rubbing shoulders with emerging directors such as Boo Junfeng and fr:Morgan Simon.
He developed his project Sunset through the TorinoFilmLab Script&Pitch programme in 2012 and the Framework programme in 2015.
His debut feature film, Son of Saul, premiered at the 68th Cannes Film Festival as part of the main competition. It won the Grand Prix, the second-most prestigious prize of the festival. Nemes accepted the 2015 Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film for Son of Saul at the telecast on 10 January 2016. It is the third Hungarian film nominated for a Golden Globe and the first Hungarian film to win.
On March 15, 2024, Nemes shared a public statement with The Guardian condemning Jonathan Glazer's acceptance speech for The Zone of Interest winning Best International Feature at the 96th Academy Awards. In his speech, Glazer stated he and producer James Wilson stood "... as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people, whether the victims of October 7 in Israel or the ongoing attack on Gaza." Nemes stated that Glazer "... should have stayed silent instead of revealing he has no understanding of history and the forces undoing civilization, before or after the Holocaust..." and accused him of resorting to "talking points disseminated by propaganda meant to eradicate, at the end, all Jewish presence from the Earth." Nemes also suggested that the choice in the film to focus on the perpetrators of the Holocaust rather than the victims related to Glazer's speech, writing "[M]aybe it all makes sense, ironically... there is absolutely no Jewish presence on screen in The Zone of Interest. Let us all be shocked by the Holocaust, safely in the past, and not see how the world might eventually, one day, finish Hitler’s job - in the name of progress and endless good."

## Influences and artistry

Nemes has named Michelangelo Antonioni, Andrei Tarkovsky, Ingmar Bergman, Terrence Malick and Stanley Kubrick as some of his favorite directors.

## Filmography
### Feature films

| Year | Title | Director | Writer | Notes |
| 2015 | Son of Saul | Yes | Yes | |
| 2018 | Sunset | Yes | Yes | |
| TBA | Orphan | Yes | Yes | Post-production |

### Short films

| Year | Title | Director | Writer | Notes |
| 1999 | Arrivals | Yes | Yes | |
| 2007 | With a Little Patience | Yes | Yes | |
| 2008 | The Counterpart | Yes | Yes | |
| 2010 | The Gentleman Takes His Leave | Yes | Yes | also producer |

## Awards

* Kossuth Prize (2016)
Short film
* 2007 - Hungarian Society of Cinematographers - Best Short Film
* 2007 - Hungarian Film Week - Best Short Film
* 2007 - Bilbao International Festival of Documentary and Short Films - Silver Mikeldi
* 2008 - Angers Premiers Plans - Best European Short Film
* 2008 - Angers Premiers Plans - ARTE Prize
* 2008 - Angers Premiers Plans - Best Actress: Virág Marjai
* 2008 - Athens International Film & Video Festival - Black Bear Award
* 2008 - Mediawave International Film Festival - Best Cinematography
* 2008 - Indie Lisboa International Film Festival - Onda Curta Award
* 2010 - NexT International Film Festival Bucharest - "Cristian Nemescu" Best Directing Award
Feature film
* 2015 - Cannes Film Festival - Grand Prix
* 2015 - Cannes Film Festival - FIPRESCI Competition Award
* 2015 - Cannes Film Festival - François Chalais Prize
* 2015 - Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film
* 2016 - Independent Spirit Award for Best International Film
* 2016 - Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film
* 2017 - BAFTA Award for Best Film Not in the English Language
* 2018 - 75th Venice International Film Festival - FIPRESCI Award
* 2018 - 15th Seville Film Festival - Eurimages Award To The Best European Coproduction
* 2019 - 9th Beijing International Film Festival - The Best Director