The Angelmakers

"In a small, sleepy village in the Hungarian countryside, after the First World War, a series of arsenic murders took place. Over 140 bodies were discovered. The victims, all men, were apparently killed by their wives. The Angelmakers is a fascinating and brilliantly irreverent documentary that reconstructs the murders from conversations with the town’s present, mostly elderly, inhabitants – many of whom remember the murders themselves or heard the stories from their parents or grandparents. Through recollections, anecdotes and sometimes foggy memories, different pieces of the story slowly emerge, and gradually an intriguing web of circumstance and motivation begins to appear. The idea was first suggested by a local midwife. The arsenic was extracted from flypaper and added in tiny doses to the husbands’ meals. The marriages were all arranged. Women weren’t allowed a life outside their homes. Many of them were beaten by their husbands who returned from the First World War wounded, crippled and estranged. The townspeople also reflect on how little has changed over the years. While women in the village today have a small amount of freedom, with divorce being an option, they must still fight for certain rights and privileges. Alternating between the inhabitants' first-person narrations and vivid portraits of the countryside, The Angelmakers considers the social, economic and cultural factors behind one of the most extreme examples of female uprising in history."    

Source: http://cinemaguild.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=TCGS&Product_Code=2217