Oscar winning director admits being informer

[emad]

Associated Press in Budapest
Saturday January 28, 2006
The Guardian


Istvan Szabo, director of the Oscar-winning film Mephisto, right, has admitted having been an informer for Hungary's communist-era secret police, according to an interview published yesterday.

Szabo was quoted as saying he reported on fellow students at Budapest's Academy of Theatre and Film as part of efforts to save the life of a classmate who took up arms against the communist regime in the 1956 revolution.

"I am grateful to fate and subsequently I can be proud of what happened," he told Nepszabadsag. "The work for the secret police was the bravest and most fearless of my life."
http://film.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1696909,00.html

[joeybee12]

1. When I clicked on the link...what you've cut and pasted

was all that was there...no more details.

[emad]

3. That's all they had.

Wish it was more.

[hwmnbn]

2. I don't get it.....

he saved the life of a classmate by turning others in to be killed? WTF, that logic escapes me.

[RandomKoolzip]

4. Wasn't Mephisto about an actor in Nazi Germany who

rats out his fellow actors?

Anyway, nobody loves a snitch.