The Smell of Humans

The profound depths of Ernő Szép’s life and poetry are revived in Győző Ferencz’s new film adaptation of the poet’s novel, The Smell of Humans. This stoic and lyrical narrative of twenty fateful days offers a historically and artistically authentic account of an inhuman era.

In Hungarian with English subtitles

In the autumn of 1944 the 60-year-old Ernő Szép, along with other Jewish men, was called up for forced labor. By then he had been evicted from the hotel on Margit Island, Budapest, that had been his home for 33 years, and was interned in a building marked by the yellow star on Pozsonyi Street. Eventually he was released after three weeks, thanks to a protective pass from the Swedish Embassy, after he had a first-hand experience of Nazi inhumanity.

His memoir, The Smell of Humans, is a diary-like account of the long marches, nights spent at sports stadiums and brick-yards, the atrocities and cold-blooded murders committed by Hungarian Arrow Cross guards, the methodical acts of terror that robbed Jews of all human dignity and made their tormentors shed their humanity. Yet Ernő Szép’s voice, here as in his other works, remains graceful and spontaneous, steeped in empathy as he recounts his tribulations while maintaining an ironic distance. The sentences of The Smell of Humans emanate the same aura of humanity confronting tragedy that makes his poems so moving. In this dramatization based on his memoir the included poems and chansons from Ernő Szép’s oeuvre add a note of lyrical counterpoint.

In 2023, the streamed film-play won the Award for Best Biographical Film at the ONIROS Film Awards® in New York, and József Gyabronka received the Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of Ernő Szép. In 2023 the film was also awarded with the special prizes for Best Script Adaptation and Best Actor at the Third Literature in Cinema film festival in Buenos Aires, and in the Feature Film category it also won the Official Finalist Award at the Near Nazareth Film Festival, Israel.