Árpád Soós

Árpád Soós was born in Budapest on 22 September 1944. Immediately after completing his secondary school leaving examinations he joined Magyar Televízió, the Hungarian state television service, as a trainee film editor.

While already working in television he studied at the Academy of Drama and Film (Színház- és Filmművészeti Főiskola) in Budapest, from which he graduated in 1972 and qualified as a director.

Soós spent his whole career at Magyar Televízió, which his family later described as his only workplace. In the public education department (Közművelődési Főszerkesztőség) he worked as a film editor and transmission director, including on Delta, the station's popular science news magazine.

After graduating as a director he specialised in documentaries, educational programmes and portrait films. From 1975 to 1980 he worked in the fine arts editorial department. Among his films were Magyar kápolna a Vatikánban, a 1980 documentary on the Hungarian chapel in the Vatican, and Amerigo Tot (1982), a portrait of the Hungarian born sculptor Imre Tóth. The fine arts series Műteremben (In the Studio, 1981 to 1983) profiled artists including the painters István Mácsai, László Bartha and Endre Szász, the sculptor Imre Varga, the ceramicist Zsuzsa Morvay and the costume designer Erzsébet Mialkovszky. A 1984 photograph from the Fortepan archive shows him directing a television film about the Déri Museum in Debrecen.

In 1980 he moved to the cultural directorate, where he made literary programmes including 45 perc a Hungáriában (1984), the literary café series Törzsasztal (1984 to 1985) and the poetry series A hónap versei (1991 to 1992). In the 1990s he directed the magazine series ... az én váram, a two part documentary on the chapel studio exhibitions at Balatonboglár between 1970 and 1973, and architectural films on Antoni Gaudí (1996), Morocco (1997), the Wekerle garden suburb of Budapest (1998) and the architect Alajos Hauszmann (1999). He also contributed to the series Családi krónikák (Family Chronicles), with films on the Schulek dynasty, the Boross family of Nagybajom and the Majoros ceramics family, and made a two part documentary on Alba Iulia (Gyulafehérvár).

From 2000 to 2006 he worked in the arts editorial department. His later documentaries included a film on the educator János Gönczöl for the Anyanyelv series (2004) and a portrait of the Vígszínház costume designer Márta Jánoskúti (2005), both of which he also wrote. After forty years in television he retired as a senior director.

Soós was married to Márta, and the couple had two sons, Gábor and Gyula. His family said that his vocation and the friendships he made at Magyar Televízió shaped his whole life.

Árpád Soós died on the morning of 19 October 2026, aged 82. His death was announced by his family in a message from his son, which described him as the golden boy of the golden age of Magyar Televízió, and it was reported by NLC, Blikk, Origo and other Hungarian media on 20 October 2026. No cause of death was made public, and funeral arrangements had not been announced at the time of the first reports.

In his farewell, his son wrote that Magyar Televízió had meant everything to his father and had been his only workplace, and closed with the words: "God be with you, dear Father, have a good journey. We will never forget."

Soós belonged to the generation of directors who built Hungarian public service television's tradition of cultural and educational programming. His portrait films and series preserved on screen the working lives of many Hungarian painters, sculptors, craftspeople and architects, and his programmes on literature, poetry and architecture reached a broad television audience.

His work was recognised with ten Magyar Televízió presidential awards for quality (Nívódíj), prizes at the Szolnok fine arts film festival and the Hungarian Film Week, an award at a documentary festival held at the Pompidou Centre in Paris, and the Kamera Hungária prize in 1998.