László Nemes on Orphan, family trauma and antisemitism in film

László Nemes had been talking for less than five minutes when a swastika appeared above his head. The Hungarian director was in a London hotel suite discussing his new film Orphan, which explores the long shadow of the Holocaust. The symbol was an ancient Hindu design on a wall hanging, but Nemes noticed it at once.

Nemes, 49, made his name with Son of Saul, his 2015 debut feature about a Sonderkommando at Auschwitz-Birkenau. The film won the Oscar for best foreign language film and was widely praised as one of the most powerful movies ever made about the Holocaust. Orphan is only his second feature in the 11 years since.

The new film follows Andor, a teenage Jewish boy in postwar Hungary who survived the Holocaust in an orphanage. He imagines his missing father as a war hero. Instead, a brutal butcher arrives and claims the role. The story traces the compromises his mother made and the identity of the boy’s real father. Nemes says the plot mirrors what happened to his own father, András, now 81 and a theater and film director in Hungary.

András grew up believing he was the son of one man, only to learn that his real father was the abusive butcher who returned after the war. Nemes says his father still harbors some doubt about the truth. The director grew up hearing from his grandmother that the family past was full of shadows and trauma. He made Orphan, he says, to confront those shadows and accept the most difficult parts of his own inheritance.

Nemes is open about the sexual relationship his grandmother had with his biological grandfather to survive. He describes the psychological damage passed down to his father and then to him. He says his father abandoned him through divorce and through resentment that Nemes had been luckier than he was.

The director links his family story to a wider European one. He argues that European Jews were orphaned first by 19th-century assimilation and then by the Holocaust, in which 1.5 million children were killed. He says postwar Europe never truly integrated the experience of the Shoah into its culture.

Nemes believes a film like Son of Saul would struggle to find support today. He says the politicization of cinema and a reluctance to engage with Jewish subjects have made such projects harder to finance and distribute. Orphan itself had difficulty securing a U.S. distributor, he says.

He describes what he calls an orgy of antisemitism overtaking the West. He contrasts humanism with what he terms anti-humanism, an identity politics that he says reduces people to groups and is driven by a race obsession and moral self-righteousness. He criticizes artists who call for cultural boycotts of Israel and says they ignore far larger atrocities elsewhere.

Nemes also faulted director Jonathan Glazer’s 2024 Oscar speech for The Zone of Interest, saying it was an attempt to please Hollywood’s overclass rather than a responsible reflection on the Holocaust. He argues that filmmakers should focus on making good movies instead of political statements.

When the interview took place last October, Nemes said he felt somewhat isolated for speaking out. In a later conversation this month, he noted that his new film Moulin had been selected for Cannes and that the defeat of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán had created a moment of hope in his country.