The Tragedy of Man (Hungarian: Az ember tragédiája) is a 2011 Hungarian adult animated epic drama film directed by Marcell Jankovics, starring Tibor Szilágyi, Mátyás Usztics, Ágnes Bertalan, Tamás Széles and Piroska Molnár.

The narrative is set in several different eras, spanning from Biblical creation to 50,000 BC to the distant future, and follows Adam, Eve, and Lucifer as they explore humanity and the meaning of life.

Each segment has a different visual style to reflect the art of the respective time periods.

The segments were financed individually and sometimes exhibited independently at film festivals and on Hungarian television.

In ancient Egypt, Adam is Pharaoh Djoser in 2650 BC who falls in love with Eve in the form of a slave woman.

Disillusioned, Adam is taken to ancient Rome in 67 AD where he and Lucifer enjoy themselves with gladiator games and prostitutes.

As civilization grows decadent and falls apart, Adam and Eve encounter Saint Peter and then Jesus, and turn to God, who gives them a message of love and fraternity.

Adam becomes Tancred, Prince of Galilee in 1096 AD but is disgusted by all the petty savagery within a Church prone to schisms.

Adam tries to court Eve and is eventually able to seduce her, right after World War I, with the help of jewels and a Gypsy fortune-teller.

When social unrest erupts in the 20th century, Adam wishes for a society ruled after scientific principles for the common good.

Although initially positive, Adam immediately regrets the disappearance of nations, as he thinks people should have a past and an identity to hold on to.

After the fall of communism in Hungary in 1989, Jankovics could no longer rely on the state-funded system he had produced his previous films within and had to seek alternative ways to finance the project.

[2] In 2008 some funding was secured when Jankovics' 1974 short film Sisyphus was used in an American car commercial which was shown at the Super Bowl.

[1] In 2011 the film received 19.5 million forint from the culture department of the Ministry of National Resources.

[7] Bill Stamets of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote: The animation styles vary throughout this chronology of human folly, but this wary sermon stays on message[.]

[8]Stamets continued: To add strains of grandeur, [Jankovics] draws on works by Bach, Mussorgsky, Respighi and Wagner.