The Sunday Times
01 January 2006
When a young film-maker learnt about a village of women who murdered their husbands, she knew their story would make astonishing viewing. Now her poignant documentary is winning international acclaim, writes Claire Sawers.
Astrid Bussink, a film-maker studying at the Edinburgh College of Art, stumbled across the subject matter for her first documentary as she was leafing through an encyclopaedia of female killers. 
“When I started reading about this story, I just couldn’t believe I hadn’t heard about it already,” Bussink says as she rolls up a thin cigarette in the smoker’s lounge at the college. “I thought, why isn’t this common knowledge?” The story that had caught her eye concerned the “arsenic murders” that took place between the two world wars in the Hungarian village of Nagyrev. Although it had the ring of a terrifying folk tale, it was a true story of mass murder in a sleepy rural town that claimed the lives of 140 men, killed, apparently, by their wives.
Armed with only that scant knowledge and some sketchy research from the internet, Bussink, 30, knew she had stumbled across the most compelling of stories, which at the very least would provide subject matter for a student film project. Determined to find out more, she set off for Hungary.
There she encountered suspicion at first, but gradually won the confidence of some of the people of Nagyrev, and produced her documentary, The Angelmakers, a remorseless exposition of the murders. Designed as part of her masters degree project, it promises to be a runaway success.
Less than a year after her first visit to Nagyrev, and although she has barely finished editing the final cut, the story has made her name. The Angelmakers won the First Appearance Award after its premiere at the International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam last month. Then, at her art college’s graduation awards last month, Bussink was highly commended for the Inglis Allen award supported by the Edinburgh International Film Festival.
Bussink is clearly tickled as she watches television deals and film festival invitations roll in, but she casts her mind back to a few months ago, when she was worried she wouldn’t be able to get her project off the ground.
“The mayor of Nagyrev told me he didn’t want me making a film about the killings,” says Bussink, recalling the moment when she arrived in the village in March last year, only to have the locals slam their doors in her face.
“People were very reluctant to talk. They’d had bad experiences with journalists in the past, who only reported on the bloodiness and the basic facts. Some of the victims’ relatives were still alive, so they found the whole thing pretty painful.”
Bussink’s father works in a Dutch psychiatric prison and it seems clear that she has absorbed some of his bedside manner. She played it cool at first and spent a few evenings in the local pub. She drank coffee next to the locals, earning their trust before she started questioning them about their bloody past. When they realised that their visitor was not looking for lurid headlines, they began opening up.
The incidents that brought infamy to Nagyrev culminated in 1929, when 51 women were arrested on suspicion of poisoning their husbands. Although the exact number of killings has never been confirmed, 140 bodies were exhumed from the village cemetery and found to contain arsenic.
It was discovered that the poison was taken from household flykiller cubes and added in tiny doses to the victims’ coffee and meals. The arsenic had no taste or smell and took about two months to kill. When some of the victims began suffering from convulsions, vomiting and fevers, the few that were able to visit a doctor were diagnosed with epilepsy. The wives thought they had committed the perfect crime, until someone tipped off the authorities.
In a sinister twist, Bussink points out that although it was common knowledge that murders were taking place in scores of other neighbouring villages, Nagyrev is the only village where bodies were exhumed.
In many ways, it was typical of many poverty-stricken settlements between the wars, with widespread poverty and very high unemployment. Most of the houses there had their own vineyards, which sounds idyllic. But as Bussink points out, the downside was that drunkenness was rife, especially among the men.
Many marriages in rural Hungary were arranged, and divorce was considered unacceptable. Faced with a lifetime of unhappiness in a loveless marriage, where husbands were often violent and abusive, Bussink believes the women were simply looking for an escape. “They couldn’t see another way out and once the murders began, it turned into a sort of mass hysteria.”
The idea for the arsenic murders came from a woman known as Auntie Zsuzsanna, the midwife in a village without a doctor. She had discovered the poison after her cat died from drinking water from a flytrap. Later, when a very ill elderly man visited her, she administered the poison as a form of euthanasia.
“This was a small community,” says Bussink. “If a couple were unhappy, everyone knew. Auntie Zsuzsi would offer her services. She would say to the wife, ‘If you aren’t coping, there is a solution’.”
Bussink, a former magazine picture editor and fine arts student from Holland, was determined she would handle the bizarre story sympathetically, rather than go for shock value. She spent four months living in the village before pulling out the camera. She had cobbled together a crew from the Budapest film school. “I think they found it quite charming that we weren’t a big professional TV crew. We weren’t pushy. In fact, we were quite clumsy. We made the film using a lot of volunteers who were all incredibly enthusiastic.”
Although she has no documentary training, Bussink’s film is a beautifully poignant tale that avoids sensationalism as it unravels the village’s open secret. Chatting to elderly couples and neighbours about village life, the film is warm and, in places, remarkably irreverent. In Amsterdam, the award jury heaped praise on Bussink’s work, saying: “With structural density, black humour, poetry and the compassion for the characters, the director is revealing a story that, only at the first sight, could be seen as a historical one. This is definitely a film of a young film-maker who has already mastered many of the elements of the art of documentary film-making.”
Chatting in the art college lounge, Bussink is chuffed but a little embarrassed when we are interrupted by fellow students, who have come to congratulate her on her appearance the day before on Richard and Judy. Ten minutes later, her mobile rings with a call from the BBC. They want to know where they can get hold of a tape of The Angelmakers.
A pretty blonde, with squarish glasses and a chilled-out manner, she admits things are snowballing. Just last week, she had to say no to an Israeli television station that wanted to buy the rights to her film for a piffling $400.
“I’m obviously really happy the film is being talked about,” she says. “I guess I’m a bit worried, though. I really wouldn’t want it to be sensationalised if it was to fall into the wrong hands.”
Next stop is the Cinéma du Réel festival in Paris, followed by the Women’s Film Festival in Seoul and another in Trieste, Italy. The Sheffield and Edinburgh film festivals are also trying to secure a screening.
“I only really set out to make a portrait of a modern-day village with a secret past,” says Bussink, who couldn’t believe her luck when she found residents who were old enough to remember the murders. “I hope I have shown that this is a very universal story. With the right set of circumstances, it really could have happened anywhere.”
For more details about the film go to www.angelmakers.nl