The sophomore film by Laszlo Nemes, who won an Oscar in 2016 for his debut 'Son of Saul', premiered last week at the Venice Film Festival.


Hungary has selected Academy Award winning director Laszlo Nemes' sophomore feature Sunset as its submission in the best foreign-language film for the Oscars.


In 2016 Nemes won an Oscar for his feature debut, Son of Saul - a stunning portrayal of a Jewish man's desperate attempt to give a dead boy he believes is his son a proper burial in the midst of the brutality of Nazi concentration camp.


His new film, which premiered in competition at the Venice film festival last week, is set some 30 years before Son of Saul at another major historical juncture in the lives of Hungarians: the eve of the First World War.


"Sunset is about a civilisation at its crossroads," Nemes said in a statement issued Tuesday by the Hungarian National Film Fund.


"In the heart of Europe at the height of progress and technology, without being written in history, the personal story of a young woman becomes the reflection of the birth of the 20th century."


Starring Juli Jakab as Irisz, a young woman who comes to live and work in Budapest in 1913 on a mission to find a brother she had never known of, the film dives into a world of violence and intrigue. With visual references to Stanley Kubrick's seminal 1957 anti-war film Paths of Glory and a nod to the masked sex party scene from his 1999 film Eyes Wide Shut, the film runs to nearly two and half hours in length.


The critic noted: "The [film's] heavy symbolism and penchant for creating unresolved mysteries drives it far from the poignancy of Son of Saul."


Produced by Laokoon Filmgroup, (Hungary) and Playtime (France) with the support of the Hungarian National Film Fund, Sunset was made on a budget of $10.4 million.


Sony Pictures Classics has picked up the film for North America and Australia. World sales are being handled by Playtime.


Hungary has a long history of submitting films to the Oscars, starting in 1965 with Zoltan Fabri's Twenty Hours. Nominated ten times (including last year for Ildiko Enyedi's On Body and Soul), it has won the coveted golden statuette twice - in 1981 for Istvan Szabo's Mephisto and in 2016 for Son of Saul.