Réka Pigniczky documentary filmmaker / visual journalist

What does the Hungarian revolution of 1956 – the Communist bloc’s first major uprising against the Soviet Union – mean to young adults whose grandparents were even too young to remember it?

In 56/Z, Réka Pigniczky’s 6th film about the Hungarian revolution, the award-winning Hungarian-American director collaborates with Gen Z art students at the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design (MOME), who are tasked with creating an installation of artworks about their relationship to 1956. The film follows the students as they engage with the Memory Project – an archive of life-history interviews with 1956 eyewitnesses – and shows how their artwork evolves along with their connection to the events of history.

1956 is both personal and political, and the students in the film struggle to express their own views. The installation, a collaboration between the Memory Project and MOME, helps answer one student’s question: “What do I do with a subject with which I have no connection whatsoever?” The film is less about 1956 and more about how this new generation approaches history.