Born at the beginning of the Cold War, he became interested in film at a very young age, though in Hungary at the time, film containing subversive content was heavily censored. He shot his first short on a Super 8 film camera at the age of 14 and began to draft short scripts and turn them into movies starring friends and family. One year he won first and second prizes at a local amateur film festival, and coincidentally another young filmmaker, István Szabó, was the head of the jury. Koltai graduated from the School of Drama and Film in Budapest, a school known for nurturing such legends as Vilmos Zsigmond and László Kovács.
Collaboration with István Szabó
Still early in his career he gained international recognition during his collaborations with Szabó, namely his film Mephisto, which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and the cult political classic "Angi Vera" by Pal Gabor. At this point the international film community was starting to take notice of these Eastern European films. While Hollywood was at the peak of creativity a decade before after several decades of turning out films that didn't face the same restrictions as in these parts of the world, the Hungarian artistic spirit was beginning to find its place in the world, and many Hungarian directors were confronting truths about their country's tainted Nazi-affiliated history. What followed was several artistic and political masterpieces, the teen-oriented Time Stands Still, a film many considered to be well ahead of its time, Cannes Film Festival winner Colonel Redl, which garnered yet another Oscar nomination, and Hanussen, another political drama loosely based on the rise of Hitler. In 1995 at the 19th Moscow International Film Festival he won the Special Silver St. George for the Director of Photography for his work on the film Mario and the Magician.
Work in Hollywood
Around this time Koltai decided to make the move to the United States, a dramatic departure for any European filmmaker, let alone cinematographer, though clearly many opportunities lied in the Hollywood playing field. So he joined the American Society of Cinematographers and began to compile an impressive body of work, notably Luis Mandoki's White Palace, Wrestling Ernest Hemingway, Born Yesterday, When a Man Loves a Woman, Just Cause, Jodie Foster's Home for the Holidays, and Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau's last film together Out to Sea. While none of these films had a particularly signature or even beautiful style, due to the cookie-cutter industry standards Hollywood notoriously places over artistic license, it was around this time that another fateful collaboration took place, and that would be with Giuseppe Tornatore, the legendary director of Cinema Paradiso. The Legend of 1900 would be their first film together, a story about a piano player who was born and raised on a steam boat. Tornatore brought out some of Koltai's best work by allowing an actual creative collaboration to take place on set, instead of the cinematographer just taking orders from the director, and the result is what many consider to be his most beautiful work. This led to a career high for any cinematographer, being nominated for an Academy Award for Tornatore's sweeping love story Malèna in 2000.
As of 15 February 2006: Koltai finalized his first American directing deal for Focus Features, on the film Evening, scripted by Susan Minot and Michael Cunningham. Shooting took place summer 2006 in Rhode Island. Actresses Claire Danes, Toni Collette, Vanessa Redgrave and Meryl Streep star in the movie. Koltai's next projects are Aline & Wolfe, and Spider Dance. The former, which is scheduled to commence principal photography in 2009, tells the story of American writer Thomas Wolfe and his tumultuous affair with the much older and married arts patron and Broadway set designer Aline Bernstein, who is credited with inspiring Wolfe's writing career. Spider Dance is based upon the life of Lola Montez; focusing on her travels in Australia and is set for release in Christmas 2010.
