Béla Tarr's The Man from London has received plaudits but it's not really a Hungarian movie, is it?

No, it's a European movie. These kinds of distinctions rapidly become meaningless for filmmakers because their careers are now sustained by many countries and many funds so that the question of authorship becomes very difficult to ascertain. It's Tarr's movie, but it has a German cameraman, British actors-so it's a European film. I think this is the future. When you had the studio system in Hollywood you were certain to be paid and money was there to realise the projects. In return, you sacrificed your authorial vision. But everyone knew they would get to make movies. Now it's not guaranteed at all.

A studio system of sorts operated during Hungary's Communist period; it's just that it was subject to censorship and political control.

It's an unpopular view, but communism is the best thing that ever happened to Hungarian cinema. How could a filmmaker like Miklós Jancsó have achieved his vision without the resources of the studios of the Communist party? The same was true of Academy Award-winner István Szabó. Likewise István Gaál. All those filmmakers were sustained by this big mechanism. And yet, in not wanting to fully co-operate with them, they were forced to be cunning and clever, and they made more interesting films because they tried to make films beneath the censorship radar. When everything can be realised nothing is worth doing- suddenly you have nothing to say because everything can be said. And Hungarian cinema, like Czech and Polish cinema, went through a post-Communist phase when suddenly you have a million films about drugs, sex, guns, gangsters and the like, and the whole world goes: so what? It's been 18 years since communism ended and you're still making these adolescent movies-you should have grown up by now.

Are Hungarians still waiting for credible films about their past?

In Romania now they're using the freedom of the post-Communist world to talk about the Communist world. That's a fascinating dichotomy. The problem with Hungarian cinema is 1956. It's a national obsession. I made a pledge last year: no films about 1956 and no films about the Roma. That immediately discounts sixty per cent of the national product. It would be far more interesting to see films like the German The Life of Others, which was about people dealing with the dictatorship. Before and after 1956 you have a historical convulsion in terms of communism: that's the most fascinating thing that ever happened to this country; moving from an imperial regime through democracy to the Communist regime. It's a captivating narrative full of dramatic conflicts within people, even filmmakers. And yet we get endless versions of György Szomjas's The Sun Street Boys: young boys are brave against the Russians. Who cares? Tell us something about the way the people lived! Jancsó is a great filmmaker. He uses dramatic archetypes. In Beloved Elektra (1974), for example, he's using classical mythology in order to make political points about what it means to live under a Communist state.

That's really clever because it's operating on multiple levels. If the lesson of Romania teaches us anything it is that you don't need many filmmakers to make a movement. The new Romanian cinema? Four filmmakers: okay, that's enough. The Nouvelle Vague was six.

To be fair, a new generation of talented filmmakers has emerged in Hungary: Szabolcs Hajdu, György Pálfi, Ferenc Török, Diana Groó. Pálfi has a very interesting and unique style and can create very good narratives.

It's unique. But Hukkle was a 20-minute short film stretched out to feature-length. And Taxidermia-that's a completely empty film; it says nothing interesting about either communism or the human body or the effect of communism on the human body. It's only trying to shock you. He's not an intellectual, but he thinks he's an intellectual. Kornél Mundruczó isn't an intellectual either; he's just a gifted filmmaker- his film Delta was head and shoulders above anything else at this year's festival.

You mentioned Jancsó. He's managed to reshape his classic style to new circumstances.

The Pepe-Kapa stories in his last five films-I think they're quite incomprehensible. They're strictly for Hungarians. I can't understand them. Jancsó had to adjust, to redefine his style for financial reasons. He's fascinating, but those films are full of linguistic puns, satirical references to events in Hungarian culture that I know nothing of. So his films will never get seen in other film festivals around the world.

What do you think are the chances of Hungarian films being distributed abroad?

In the UK almost never, and in the US even less so. The problem is only partly the Hungarian cinema. The trick for a national film industry like Hungary's is for its filmmakers to produce something which is culturally specific and exotic, but universal enough in its themes. The Life of Others is a prime example. But that's only part of the problem. The main problem is that distribution in the UK and US is so conservative and so adverse to other languages. Only French cinema can break through. But the situation was so different in the Sixties. Cinema is passing from the centre of culture to the edge of culture. It's just one of many things that has to compete for people's leisure time-television, books, magazines, playstation, the Internet.

But on the other hand arthouse cinema is becoming more and more aristocratic.

Exactly, and that's because it is sustained by festivals. But festivals don't feed into the mainstream anymore; they exist in parallel. So this kind of filmmaking doesn't make any money. Without the support of 20 influential people in the world Béla Tarr would not have a career. Arthouse cinema has no connection with commercial reality. But some makers of these movies, like Béla Tarr, are cultural ambassadors of a sort.