I’m writing a series on Hot Air about great anti-communist films. These are the movies that I hope to screen next year during the Anti-Communist Film Festival.
One of the films in the lineup is Freedom’s Fury. Freedom’s Fury is a documentary about the Olympic water polo match between Hungary and the Soviet Union at the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne, Australia. The match took place against the background of the Hungarian Revolution, an anti-communist uprising that was brutally crushed by the Soviet army. The match turned violent and bloody, with historians calling it the “blood in the water match.” Freedom’s Fury was written and directed by Colin Keith Gray and Megan Raney Aarons. It was executive-produced by Lucy Liu and Quentin Tarantino. Tarantino described the film as “the best untold story ever.” The film is narrated by Mark Spitz.
There’s a reason why the “blood in the water match” is an “untold” story. The political left, which is still putting up socialists for public office, does not like to remind people of the brutality of the old Soviet Union. It might offer a parallel to the crazy modern left in the West and warn people off of this evil pseudo-religion.
The Soviets took over Hungary in 1945 after World War II. In 1956, the Hungarian people staged an uprising, and for a few blissful days, their country was free. Then on November 4, a Russian invasion force crushed the rebellion, killing or wounding tens of thousands of Hungarian citizens. The semi-final game against the Soviets became a political battle fought in the water.
Variety had this to say in their review of Freedom’s Fury:
What makes this…film so riveting is the combination of interviews with the protagonists – all of whom display tremendous grace and poise in describing the events – with footage of the revolution. The footage is full of stunningly young, impossible good-looking students who, at first, march peacefully through the streets, astonished by the massive numbers of people from all layers of society (the marchers numbered at least 100,000 people, possibly twice that number when the protest reached its peak) who spontaneously decided to join them. Within days, however, those same students are holding weapons or, often, lying dead in the street. The violent emotional swings of those revolutionary days are difficult to comprehend; the power of each moment, though, can be seen on the faces of those who participated, particularly of the man who weeps when he is asked to recall how he felt during their few days of freedom. “We were all family,” he says.
Another man puts it this way: “We told the Soviets we didn’t want to live a lie. We wanted to live a human life.”
Communism is a lie that promises utopia and then steals people’s humanity and crushes their dreams. It is a cult that doesn’t only use guns and tanks to control people, but shame, intimidation, blackmail, and coercion. Its goal is what John Paul II said it is – the “pulverization of the human person.” It doesn’t allow jokes.
The Anti-Communist Film Festival seeks to remind people about the evils of communism. We want it to be an annual event with educational material for schools. In Freedom’s Fury, a Hungarian teacher named Karoly Nagy reiterates what people from John Paul II to Milan Kundera have said: Europe suffered two catastrophes in the 20th century — one at the hands of the Nazis, the other at the hands of the communists. “We were liberated from one devastating dictatorial extremist creature called Nazism,” Nagy said, “but during that course, a lot of people were also liberated from all their belongings, they were liberated from their freedom and their life, women were liberated from their honor. Liberation was devastation. The Soviets forgot to do one thing. They forgot to go home.”
We also want the festival to be fun, which is why we are showing Red Dawn – and maybe even Back to School.
Freedom’s Fury director Colin Keith Gray once noted that in 1956, the polo athletes from both Hungary and Russia were victims of a system they all hated: “Both teams were as much a victim of the circumstances, and really both countries were imprisoned by the same ideology – and these guys were able to finally reconnect as human beings and as fellow athletes. That was something that we really wanted to highlight, the sort of humanistic side to counter the sort of oppression of ideology that everyone had suffered under in the Eastern Bloc.”
Note: You can contribute support for the festival by donating at the GoFundMe page for the project.
Editor’s Note: Do you enjoy conservative reporting that takes on the radical left and woke media? Support our work so that we can continue to bring you the truth.
Join Hot Air VIP and use promo code FIGHT to get 60% off your membership!
