Tarr made a dramatic stylistic and critical breakthrough with this brooding and visually striking study of desolation and betrayal set in small town Hungary and tracing the cruel love triangle that emerges between a taciturn loner, a nightclub singer and her smuggler husband. The first of five films to date written with novelist László Krasznahorkai and structured around the haunting minimalist music of Mihály Vig, Damnation – with its decaying factories, dingy bars and bleak, expressionistic landscapes – introduced the dark, rainy and irretrievably melancholy realm that is arguably Tarr’s greatest creation. – HG