Discoveries from Hungary World Cinema

Emma and Eddie live two lives: one on social media and one in real life. The webcam couple is out to save their marriage by starting their own adult web-studio in Eastern Europe.

Two best friends stuck in boring jobs become bachelor party planners in Budapest.

Seasoned but troubled detective Josh has spent twenty years confronting life's darkest corners, shaping him into a hardened man. Now, he faces his greatest challenge: his wife and two daughters have been kidnapped by a mysterious figure. To save them, Josh must follow the stranger's commands, move into an empty house, remain unnoticed, and complete a series of tasks. The house, a gateway to a dark dimension, begins to consume the reality around Josh, driving him toward insanity. As he navigates this perilous journey, he confronts a terror even more frightening—his own dark side.

A post mortem photographer and a little girl confront ghosts in a haunted village after the First World War.

Adam and Eve, after Eden, are granted dreams of the world to come by a deceptively sweet but ultimately contemptuous Lucifer. Adam confronts an endless procession of the horror of the human story... rapists and concubines, betrayal and savagery, mindless cruelty and fanaticism.

Three charming 20-something grandsons take a unique journey with their grannies to discover their historic and personal legacies through stories from the Second World War. Three grandsons embark an anarchic journey into the past – a complex road movie about intergenerational dialogue in Great Britain, Germany and Hungary. Granny Project is a seven-year-long investigation of three young men coming to terms with their heritage through the extraordinary lives of their grandmothers: an English spy, a dancer from Nazi Germany and a Hungarian communist Holocaust survivor. The film deals with classic values and taboo-like historical topics, and the method used is equally important as it gives an insight to the zeitgeist of the young today.

Set in 19th century Vienna, Ignac Semmelweis, a short-tempered but passionate doctor, delivers babies and carries out autopsies on a daily basis while looking for the cause of puerperal fever, the mysterious epidemic that decimates patients in the hospital.

In the darkest days of the Second World War, Yulia and Hugo, a Jewish mother and son, escape from a Ukrainian ghetto. Fearing for his safety, Yulia entrusts her boy to the care of her friend Mariana, a sex worker who lives in a brothel. Hugo is placed in a closet, nominally for his safety, but from which he rarely leaves. With little view of the outside world, he conjures up ghosts and scenarios. But over time, Mariana brings the boy out and in doing so transforms his life.

In Budapest, two rival gangs of young boys lay claim to a vacant lot. The hostilities escalate yet never quite boil over into actual violence.

Karrer plods his way through life in quiet desperation. His environment is drab and rainy and muddy. Eaten up with solitude, his hopelessness would be incurable but for the existence of the Titanik Bar and its beautiful, haunting singer. But the lady is married and Karrer is determined to keep her husband away...

In an effort to end family feuding, a young gypsy travels back in time to kill mammoths to ensure Hungary becomes rich by killing mammoths in order to create a massive oil reservoir. Things don't go entirely according to plan...

David Whitman is a chemist who lost his wife and child in a freak accident and is trying to rebuild his life on his own. While doing research, Whitman discovers a series of mysterious deaths that seem to follow in the path of Joseph Mueller, a seemingly ordinary man who works as a security guard. Unknown to Mueller, his body carries a strange contaminant that's deadly to many people, and Whitman is desperate to find Mueller and stop him before he can cause more deaths.

Tibor lives happily in his village with his wife. At least that's what he thinks. One day a series of strange occurrences begin to unfold.

Kate's husband Richard hasn't seen his cousin Harry for 20 years. So when he comes to stay with his fiancee Connie they are welcomed. But Kate senses her family is at risk when they start behaving suspiciously.

Love makes a bad relationship between father and son all the more rancorous in this drama from Hungarian director Viktor Oszkar Nagy. A convict (Janos Derzsi) returns home after a long stretch in prison to a less than enthusiastic welcome; his son (Tamas Ravasz), now in his late teens, was left to fend for himself and tend the family farm on his own after his dad went away, and the youngster blames his father for his mother's untimely death. The father wants to mend his relationship with his son, but the young man makes no secret of his contempt for his dad, and only grudgingly allows him back on the farm.

The head of the nunnery is dying, and the members are divided in two groups as the election of the new head approaches. Led by Virginia, the younger nuns stand up for changing the strict religious dogmas and would like a modern school with genuine science, a bathroom to be built, and a freer spirit. Their candidate is sister Magdolna, who went to secular universities, too. The seminarists, led by Király Erzsi, also rebel against the older nuns' strict discipline and the depressed atmosphere of the institution. However, Magdolna does not want to stay involved in the fight because she is deterred by Virginia's sinful attraction towards her and the tools Virginia is using to gain victory at any price.

Regina, the once popular girl has to make new friends at her new, conservative school. Problems arrive when she becomes enemies with Lívia, the school's queen bee, and falls in love with Márk, a musician. If these wouldn't be enough, she decides to organize a cheerleader team.

In a village on the Hungarian border, two young brothers grow up during war time with their cruel grandmother and must learn every trick of evil to survive in the absurd world of adults.

A Hungarian youth comes of age at Buchenwald during World War II. György Köves is 14, the son of a merchant who's sent to a forced labor camp. After his father's departure, György gets a job at a brickyard; his bus is stopped and its Jewish occupants sent to camps. There, György find camaraderie, suffering, cruelty, illness, and death. He hears advice on preserving one's dignity and self-esteem. He discovers hatred. If he does survive and returns to Budapest, what will he find? What is natural; what is it to be a Jew? Sepia, black and white, and color alternate to shade the mood.

In this dense setting, the inhabitants of a large, claustrophobic apartment reveal their darkest secrets, fears, obsessions and hostilities.

Tracing three generations of a family that is unable to process its past in a society still coping with the wounds of its history, from a surreal memory of World War II to modern-day Berlin.

Tibor lives happily in his village with his wife. At least that's what he thinks. One day a series of strange occurrences begin to unfold.

The film tells the story of a futuristic inhabited planet that has seemingly perfected a system of justice and imprisonment, called “Lamination”. Individuals convicted of serious crimes are encased in laminated suits, which results in virtual slavery. The criminals are referred to as “LaMBs”. The protagonists struggle with the political and ethical system of laminated imprisonment, leading to the eventual development of a romantic relationship between a free citizen and a LaMB. LaMB is an animated film produced by Animax. The film has been developed into four different episodes for Mobile and PSP users.

13 year old Lili fights to protect her dog Hagen, and is devastated when her father sets Hagen free on the streets. Still innocently believing love can conquer any difficulty, Lili sets out to save her dog. Failing in his desperate efforts to find his beloved owner, Hagen joins a canine revolt leading a revolution against their human abusers.

Love makes a bad relationship between father and son all the more rancorous in this drama from Hungarian director Viktor Oszkar Nagy. A convict (Janos Derzsi) returns home after a long stretch in prison to a less than enthusiastic welcome; his son (Tamas Ravasz), now in his late teens, was left to fend for himself and tend the family farm on his own after his dad went away, and the youngster blames his father for his mother's untimely death. The father wants to mend his relationship with his son, but the young man makes no secret of his contempt for his dad, and only grudgingly allows him back on the farm.

In 1919, Hungarian Communists aid the Bolsheviks' defeat of Czarists, the Whites. Near the Volga, a monastery and a field hospital are held by one side and then the other.

A shipment of gold being flown from Paris to Budapest is robbed in mid-air.

Using almost no dialogue, the film follows a number of residents (both human and animal) of a small rural community in Hungary – an old man with hiccups, a shepherdess and her sheep, an old woman who may or may not be up to no good, some folk-singers at a wedding, etc. While most of the film is a series of vignettes, there is a sinister and often barely perceptible subplot involving murder.

The true story of an unlikely romance in a Soviet labor camp.

Szarka and Barbi, two 17 years old girl travel to Europe to find love and happiness. The vacation starts bad, they lose all their money, but they don't wanna go home.

Karrer plods his way through life in quiet desperation. His environment is drab and rainy and muddy. Eaten up with solitude, his hopelessness would be incurable but for the existence of the Titanik Bar and its beautiful, haunting singer. But the lady is married and Karrer is determined to keep her husband away...

A psychotic killer is on the prowl, who continues to slaughter young women while an innocent man is wrongly accused and sentenced for crimes he could never have committed. A determined detective arrives on the scene and soon becomes obsessed with the case while under pressure from the prosecutor to see a man hang.

A family of boisterous children expect their father to organize a really exciting holiday. So when the chance comes up of spending it on a boat, the Ramona, it seems that the problem is solved.

This is a romantic biographical film about Franz Liszt. In a distinguished saloon of Paris, the unknown composer, Liszt, defeats the renown Thalberg at a piano competition. Through his playing, he wins the favours and later the hand of the countess D'Agoult. A daughter is born in their marriage, Cosima. Liszt is better and better known, Marie introduces him to the circle of artists.

A messed-up astronaut runs from the deadly black fog that slowly covers everything. He seems to have only a short memory but he needs to find a way out. We repeatedly follow him through different strange scenes where he seems to meet the same people on an on again, but each time they are different and the stories they tell seem to differ as well. The film focuses on a universal problem solving situation rather than on classic linear storytelling.

In an effort to end family feuding, a young gypsy travels back in time to kill mammoths to ensure Hungary becomes rich by killing mammoths in order to create a massive oil reservoir. Things don't go entirely according to plan...

András, the struggling screenwriter one day wakes up to find his girlfriend replaced by a different girl, who acts like nothing happened.

Laci Ács the two-time Olympic champion boxer suffers his first defeat on an international tour that his coach was heavily against. After a tough period he starts working hard to get back into the ring, win back the coach's trust and win his third gold at the Olympics. Starring real three-time Olympic gold medalist boxing legend László Papp.

In 1919, Hungarian Communists aid the Bolsheviks' defeat of Czarists, the Whites. Near the Volga, a monastery and a field hospital are held by one side and then the other.

After having lost her parents, young Juli returns from the Soviet Union to her native Budapest. Scarred by the wounds of the past, the ghost of Stalin’s oppression haunts her as she reunites with her aunt and adoptive mother Magda.

A shipment of gold being flown from Paris to Budapest is robbed in mid-air.

Tibor and Niki, father and daughter. The young girl was only five years old when they last saw each other, before Tibor was sent to prison. He is released seven years later and tries not to think about the past. Yet he can’t erase his daughter from his life and so they are compelled to start over from the beginning. Both are irresistibly charismatic, headstrong and irascible, but also determined to find a way back to one another.

1983: A group of high school students are having a great time near Hollywood Hills at the weekend when they bump into the Loser from their school, Sam, who's just on his way home. Sam would do anything in order to get Jenny's attention, one of prettiest girls in school. Unfortunately she's also the girlfriend of the school's bully, Biff, the quarterback of the football team. Biff and his buddies are keen to take Sam to the old abandoned amusement park to make him prove his courage as part of their initiation ceremony. They involve Jenny in their cruel game as the grand prize of the competition. Sam accepts the challenge, but the girl wouldn't let him go in by himself; she follows him into the amusement park and a night they'll never forget.

Jankovics's adaptation of the eponymous play is divided into multiple parts, and depicts the creation and fall of Man throughout history.

Hollywood, 1942. The US government pressures Hungarian-born film director Michael Curtiz, who is about to finish shooting Casablanca, to accentuate the film's propaganda message in order to sway public opinion in favor of the country's intervention in the European war.

In the late 17th century, Hungary moved from Turkish to Austrian domination, becoming a key part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In this story, which takes place shortly after that time, three outlaws murder a group of people on their way to a wedding. One young man was a slave travelling with the group to entertain them with his skills as a trumpeter. The outlaws spare him for the same reason. He allows himself to believe that they are really an unattached group of independence-fighters, but after seeing their brutal and callous ways, he cannot believe that they are good men, and he turns them in to the authorities. At that point, he is unnerved to discover how nobly they bear the rigors of captivity. ~

Revisits of locations on the Great Hungarian Plain - the puszta - that were used in Tarr's Sátántangó and Werckmeister harmóniák. Recitations of short lyric poems by Hungary's national poet Sándor Petofi.

Tibi and his small‐time crook crew haven’t grown wiser in ten years and are hired by a shadowy Japanese syndicate to steal a priceless data drive. Clueless about IT, they drag along a computer‐science teacher, only to trigger revenge from a Roma mafia boss, face off against Japanese hitmen and even anger the Slovak army. As their dream of escaping to a Malibu beach with the loot fades, Tibi’s street smarts might be their only hope.

Allegory of the suppression of the 1919 revolution and the advent of fascism in Hungary; in the countryside, a unit of the revolutionary army spares the life of father Vargha, a fanatical priest. He comes back and leads massacres. A new force, represented by Feher, apparently avenges the people, but only to impose a different, more refined and effective kind of repression.

A school physician whose son is being bullied at school finds that he must conduct a routine medical examination of one of his son's chief tormentors.

Ten-year-old Palkó has just moved home to Budapest from Berlin and observes the daily life of an ordinary Hungarian elementary school with confused amazement. Juci, the young teacher just started working there. She is the only one who understands Palkó, as in their own way, they are both suffering from the same, sometimes grotesque educational system.

The true story of an unlikely romance in a Soviet labor camp.

A bookshop renowned for its rare works is mysteriously and filled with copies of a book entitled 1, which doesn't appear to have a publisher or author. The strange almanac describes what happens to humanity in a minute. A police investigation begins and the bookshop staff are placed in solitary confinement by the Bureau for Paranormal Research. As the investigation progresses, the situation becomes more complex and the book becomes increasingly well-known, raising numerous controversies. Plagued by doubts, the protagonist has to face facts: reality only exists in the imagination of individuals.

This romantic and grandiose historical film depicts the era of the constant incursions and heroic battles fought by the defenders of the castle of Eger, led by captain István Dobó, against the heavy odds of superior numbers through the lives and love of Bornemissza Gergely and Cecey Éva. Gergely is inaugurated as a fighter already at the age of 7, when he escapes the captivity of the half-eyed Turk, Jumurdzsak, with Vica and the war-booty. In thirty years' time he becomes the first assistant of captain Dobó and the brain of the castle in the defence of Eger.

A man comes home to meet his mother and sister after many years away. He finds his mother living with a new boyfriend, and his sister to be grown-up. He begins to settle down in this new place by building a new home for himself on the delta. But when his sister moves in with him and the two begin a romance, there are tragic consequences.