The Round Up takes place within a detention camp in the remote Hungarian countryside, after the collapse of the 1848 revolution against Austrian domination. A formal variation on the main patterns of ritual power, Jansco deliberately side-steps revolutionary heroics and focuses on the persecutions and de-humanizations which always accompany conflict.

Filmed in hungary's desolate, sun scorched landscape, Jansco's formidable technique - his austere formalism and stark cinematic vision - has produced a remarkable and terrifying picture of war and its cost.