Lajos Koltai, HSC, ASC
Malena

This is Lajos Koltai's first Oscar nomination. He was born in Budapest in 1946, at the beginning of the Cold War. He shot his first Super 8 film during a family vacation when he was 14 years old. After that experience, Koltai began writing, directing and shooting "little films" starring his friends and family. One year, he won first and second prize at an amateur film festival where a promising young director named Istvan Szabo headed the jury. Koltai graduated from the School of Drama and Film in Budapest, which also nurtured Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC and Laszlo Kovacs, ASC.

Koltai subsequently shot many films with Szabo including the Oscar-winning Mephisto, the Oscar-nominated Confidence, Colonel Redl, and most recently the epic multi-generational family story Sunshine that earned cinematography prizes in Europe. His body of work also includes Time Stands Still, White Palace, Wrestling Ernest Hemingway, Born Yesterday, When a Man Loves a Woman, Home for the Holidays and Just Cause, among an eclectic blend of more than 60 European and United States made films.

"When I was a student at the School of Drama and Film, in Budapest our teacher, Gygory Illes, would tell us to study everything-history, culture, painting, architecture-and not just cinematography," says Koltai. "He also said that every movie should have a meaning. It wasn't enough to make a film that is just entertaining. All of that advice was correct. I needed everything I had ever learned to make this film and I believe it has a meaning which will make people think."

 

The Other Nominees