Tarr made a dramatic stylistic and critical breakthrough with this brooding and visually striking study of desolation and betrayal set in small-town Hungary, tracing the cruel love triangle that emerges between a taciturn loner, a nightclub singer and her smuggler husband. The first of five features written with novelist Lázló 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 melancholic realm that is arguably Tarr’s greatest creation. – Haden Guest