Balint Zagoni's film makes us discover a pioneer and key figure, unjustly forgotten, of Hungarian cinema, Jenö Janovics. The director of an important theatre in Cluj, a city of art and culture that was in turn Austro-Hungarian, Hungarian and Romanian, he realized the importance of cinema before many others, and from 1913 to 1920 he produced 72 films (including some by Michael Curtiz and Alexander Korda) with great skill and audacity. Prevented from continuing his cinematic work by geopolitical upheavals and, from 1940, by his Jewish origins, he was poorly rewarded for his praiseworthy efforts as a pioneer of Hungarian cinema.
—Guy Bellinger