Klaudia,We really loved it. We were talking about it for hours afterward--and that's a good sign of a job well done. You did a great job and got a lot of very knowledgeable heavy hitters involved to bolster your perspective. Congratulations! It filled in a lot of knowledge gaps about Communism in general. All this time, I thought it was the Polish Solidarity movement of the early 80's coupled with the failure of the Afghanistan War that broke the infrastructure of the Soviet empire. Turns out I was wrong. It all started decades earlier with the Hungarians. I'm only sorry that the Hungarians suffered so much.Congrats. You did a great job.Ed You

I have just come from what I believe was the final showing of your film at the Village East Cinema and I am again, as they say, blown away.If this doesn't end up on the Shortlist I think we should raze Hollywood.This extraordinary documentary has helped put into stone the fact that this was one of THE most important events in the Twentieth Century. And, as the cliché says, you could have heard a pin drop at any moment in the showing I saw. Everyone was completely rapt beginning to end. Not only that, but I would say that all but about three stayed through all of the credits!

I have seen many documentaries and films in my life, but never one that holds my attention quite like this wonderful film. As a boy, I followed events in Hungary in 1956, but never had a clear view of the sequence of events, or how the Hungarian Revolution played on the world stage. This movie is Michener's famous book about the Hungarian Revolution,"The Bridge at Andau," on steroids. The carefully conducted interviews give the film a human dimension. The in-depth historical commentary on the post-World War Two Hungarian police state and later Soviet duplicity, the role of Radio Free Europe and the diversion caused by an ill-timed French-British-Israeli seizure of the Suez Canal, leaves the viewer enthralled. The extensive documentary footage interwoven throughout puts it all in context.People at my screening hated to see the film end. They sat in place, eyes riveted to the screen as credits rolled. This is a well-documented, well-researched movie. Everyone should have the opportunity to view it.Thanks so much for making it.Matt

The "Torn from the Flag" documentary film - by Klaudia Kovacs - of the 1956 revolution in Hungary stands out by its absolute credibility and how it captivates the interest from the beginning to the end. As a true documentary, even though it presents facts by showing original footings of film reports and makes surviving participants speak - it does not draw conclusions. The viewer does that so much stronger. And the unavoidable conclusion is that communism is not the paradise for the working class, but the hell; that the soviet domination gained no friends, only enemies and some collaborators who tried to get out; that nobody was fighting for the system: there are no elements of a civil war in that uprising, it was only Hungarians against the soviet military; that the young generation raised by communist indoctrination turned out to be the most ferocious enemy of the system and became the backbone of the revolution. The demand was not for material gains but for freedom and democracy, not as a result of any outside influence but out of healthy, human instinct, the awakening of the soul. We also saw that the revolution was not planned, prepared and organized, it was completely spontaneous, actually unexpected and surprising at that time. Because it would have been badly timed, coinciding with the American presidential elections and the Suez Canal crisis. The West did not aid it, to the contrary: it was abandoned. I was lucky to see this film at its premiere as part of the AFI Fest. Everybody else should see it. The Hungarian 1956 event was the beginning of the collapse of the world communism and a proof that no system, based on lies, can survive too long.