Picture to download Prizes: 1997 - Budapest Hungarian Film Week Documentary Category Prize

We serve and make mistakes (Szolgálunk és vétünk) (1996, documentary, video, black/white, 90 min., DolbySR) Director: Béla Szobolits Screenplay: Béla Szobolits Director of photography: Z. András Surányi Editor: Lilian Uchlaczky Sound: Vince Kapcsos Production manager: Norbert Solymosi Producer: Béla Szobolits Production company: Golden Conch The Constitution lays down the innate right to human dignity and that nobody can be submitted to torture, or to cruel, inhuman, humiliating procedures. But we are still far from the point where we can say that in Hungary everyone can vindicate his or her human rights with the same dignity. In the flow of violence that overruns the county our film focuses on the police arbitrariness, searching for its reasons. According to official reports there is a police assault or a forced interrogation every eight hours. Anywherefrom 1100-1200 reports are made against the police annually at he Public Prosecuors. The number of the truly occurring cases is obviously many times higher than the number of reports, since the majority of the assaulted persons dont dare report them. The citizen can hardly count on legal retaliation. In the case of reporting a policeman, the investigating authorities in every third case refuse te inquiry. In other cases this proportion is one to twenty According to criminal statistics more than half of the initaited investigations are successful. If the supect is a policeman, the efficiency rate does not even reach 10 percent.