My Twentieth Century

My Twentieth Century (Hungarian: Az én XX. századom) is a 1989 Hungarian black-and-white feature film, the debut feature of director and screenwriter Ildikó Enyedi, which won the Caméra d'Or for best first film at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival.¹ It tells a playful, philosophical story of twin sisters separated in childhood whose paths cross again on the Orient Express at the turn of the twentieth century, framed by the inventions of Thomas Edison and the birth of cinema.²

Themes and style

The film mixes elements of science fiction and fabulation into its historical narrative, with characters moving across time and space, the stars given voice to assert their superiority over man-made illuminations, and asides such as a voice-over from a monkey in a zoo describing its capture.¹² Science is depicted as part of a male world that women must contend with, and the film's magical tone is presented as an alternative to the rational, sterile environment represented by most of the men.¹² Istanbul Modern describes the film as questioning the position of women in a world shaped by inventors like Edison and Tesla, who founded twentieth-century modernity.⁷

A memorable episode has Lili, the anarchist fighting social injustice, attending an event organized by feminists at which the male speaker first assures the audience of his support for women's suffrage and then, arguing ever more heatedly, proves that women do not exist; the NFI reads this deadpan digression as Enyedi's comment on scientific theories that tried to decipher female roles.¹³

The film is besotted with early and silent-era cinema: it opens with a luminous black-and-white moon descending center-frame and dissolving into a circular vignette of looped footage of a man with his head in a cannon, trying to light its fuse, a symbolic burlesque that Enyedi uses as a prologue.^{14 • 10} Despite being a sound film, it works as a love letter to silent cinema.¹⁵ The cinematography by Tibor Máthé drew particular praise; the American critic Vincent Canby, longtime reviewer for The New York Times, wrote in November 1990 that it "must be one of the most handsome black-and-white films since Federico Fellini's 8 1/2", calling it "a bracing combination of wit, invention, common sense and lunacy".⁵

Production

Enyedi shot the film from her own screenplay in German co-production, with Polish and Russian actors, at locations in Hungary and abroad.¹³ Production companies included Budapest Film Studio, Friedländer Filmproduktion GmbH, Hamburger Film Büro, ICAIC of Cuba, and MAFILM, making it a Hungarian, West German, and Cuban co-production.^{5 • 7} Sources give differing runtimes: the Cannes archive catalog lists 99 minutes, the Hungarian National Film Institute 98 minutes, Eye Filmmuseum and the Seville festival 105 minutes, Istanbul Modern 104 minutes, and a Hungarian film database 102 minutes.^{5 • 13 • 3 • 16 • 7}

A curious footnote to the film's success: David Bowie was so enthusiastic about it that he offered to star in Enyedi's next film; fearing the superstar would overwhelm the story, Enyedi declined, and Bowie instead became a producer on Bűvös vadász (The Whirlwind).¹³

Reception and legacy

The film premiered at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival, where it was screened in Un Certain Regard and won the Caméra d'Or.¹ It was celebrated for its fresh voice, original form, and a viewpoint that went beyond international film trends, which became Enyedi's signature style.¹⁰ The New York Times selected it among the 10 Best Films of the Year, and in 2000 the Hungarian film profession voted it into the "Új Budapesti Tizenkettő" (New Budapest Twelve), the twelve best Hungarian films of all time.^{6 • 13} On Metacritic it holds a Metascore of 81, labeled Universal Acclaim, with reviews from Canby (100), Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian (80), and critics at The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times.¹⁷

Despite the Cannes award, the film received only limited release and slipped into obscurity, before later revivals acclaimed it as a significant work of feminist science fiction; it is one of a handful of genre films discussed by Mark Cousins in his documentary Women Make Film (2018).¹² It was selected for Berlinale Classics in 2018, and a 4K restoration was graded under the supervision of the original cinematographer, Tibor Máthé.^{4 • 5} The Caméra d'Or and Enyedi's 2017 Golden Bear for On Body and Soul bookend her international career.⁸

One point of disagreement among sources deserves note. Most festival and archive sources describe My Twentieth Century as Enyedi's first feature, and the Caméra d'Or is awarded to a first film.^{1 • 6} The journal Senses of Cinema, however, states that after premiering in Toronto the film won the Caméra d'Or "even though it was her second, rather than her first, feature film".¹⁴

References

1. AZ EN XX SZAZADOM, Festival de Cannes
2. My 20th Century, Kino Lorber Theatrical
3. My Twentieth Century, Eye Filmmuseum
4. My 20th Century, PÖFF – Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival
5. My 20th Century, National Film Institute – Film Archive, Cannes catalog
6. Ildikó Enyedi biography, Festival de Cannes
7. MY 20TH CENTURY, Istanbul Modern
8. My Twentieth Century, AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center
9. My 20th Century, National Film Institute
10. My 20th Century – A Wonderful First Film Among the Berlinale Classics, National Film Institute – Film Archive
11. Hungarian Studies Review, Vol. XXVI, No. 1 (Spring 1999)
12. My 20th Century, The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction
13. Az én XX. századom, Nemzeti Filmintézet
14. Cerise Howard, It Was Ildikó Enyedi's 20th Century, and We Just Lived In It, Senses of Cinema, July 2023
15. On 'My Twentieth Century' by Ildikó Enyedi, ICA
16. MY TWENTIETH CENTURY, Festival de Cine de Sevilla
17. My Twentieth Century critic reviews, Metacritic

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 21, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026

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