[2] Originally from British Columbia,[2] Bertalan was twice honoured by the Canadian Student Film Festival while he was a film student at the University of British Columbia, receiving an honourable mention in 1982 for The Glass Door[3] and winning Best Director and Best Fiction Film in 1984 for The Roomer.
[4] Later based in Montreal, he acted in several films, including Bashar Shbib's Seductio, Clair Obscur and 15 Ugly Sisters, while making A Bullet in the Head.
The film, a war allegory about an injured soldier's struggle to survive in unfamiliar territory, was spoken entirely in an invented language.
[5] In 1992, A Bullet in the Head was screened by the Museum of Modern Art in New York City as part of a Canadian film series that also included Léa Pool's The Savage Woman (La Demoiselle sauvage) and André Forcier's An Imaginary Tale (Une histoire inventée).
[7] A science fiction film set on a space station, the film starred Bertalan, Gerard Gagnon and Pascale Bussières.