Discoveries from Hungary World Cinema

A fictional character comes to life

24 year old Ádám lives the calm life of a small-time pot dealer in his late-grandma's apartment, in the outskirts of Budapest. Since he left home, he created himself a low-key but functional life, which no one can really disturb. No one but perhaps Bence, his 14-year-old half-brother who just left home and is looking for refuge at Ádám’s place.

The landowner, János Karády, is knocked down and robbed on the highway. He comes to in the shabby clothes of one of the robbers. Thirteen pretty young girls take care of the young man thought to be a poor vagabond.

The village is preparing for the celebration of Mihály Sámson's entry to the Vitéz Order. There's a great competition for roles in the amateur theatrical performance, and the choir is practicing. Two girls compete for the attention of Gyula Kopácsi, the railway traffic controller: Jolán, the postal clerk, and the pastor's daughter, Sárika. Jolán's mother spreads rumors during the rehearsal of the performance that Kopácsi has already proposed to her daughter, even though he's actually leaning towards Sárika. However, at the celebration, Sárika and Sámson notice each other...

A Hungarian band plays American rock & roll and blues hits with great enthusiasm and passion, but success seems to avoid them. TV and radio don't play their songs, sometimes even their crowd just sits and sips beer. Something must be done, and the band's leader (Lóránt Schuster) comes up with the big idea: write and play songs for the people about themselves and not about some exotic, but too distant people's life. "We move from Tobacco Road to Retek street." With the remains of the band and a second singer (Gyula Deák "Bill") they find what they failed to show people before. The rich new sound can finally translate the spirit of blues and rock much more than words from any dictionaries could, this is the Kőbánya blues.

Dangerous spies act as representatives of an international recording company to get important plans from the father of an aspiring composer.

Three people live together without having anything to do with each other. The macho father used to have a shooting gallery which he had to sell. Yet secretly, he keeps on dreaming about it.

When the home where they grew up and spent the best days of their childhood is threatened, a group of kids bands together to try and save it.

A 5 minute dolly shot of people waiting in line for food filmed in beautiful black and white accompanied by music by Mihály Vig. This short was Béla Tarr's contribution to the Visions of Europe project.

In the summer of 1938, a month after the annexation of Austria and a year before the outbreak of war, the world's diplomats gather for a Refugee Conference in Evian, Switzerland. Here the Nazis send the highly respected Professor Benda, whose task it is to convince the diplomats to buy the lives of half a million Jews from Germany for ten million dollars. But no one, not even the Jewish representatives, can be convinced that the truly diabolical deal - the Germans would use the money to arm themselves - is the only chance to save human lives... The author of the original piece, Hans Habe, himself attended the conference as a young journalist. In his novel, written a quarter of a century later, he explores the world's responsibility.

In the small village of Rátót, every male is called Béla. When a woman gives birth to her child, she names him Józsi...

Imre Horváth and his friends gather to celebrate his wife's birthday. They are confused because of the changes in the country's politics and want Horváth to be much more active politically, but he is more concerned about his affair with his best friend's daughter.

A couple of news reporters are experiencing a significant day.

A 40-year-old sculptor returns home to witness the baptism of his young nephew. His return prompts a series of flashbacks to his youth and the political upheaval experienced by his family and friends.

Scenes from holiday life at Lake Balaton in Hungary during the communism.

Kalán Imre, the district doctor lives in a small village surrounded by mountains. One day he is visited by two young relatives of his and their friend, a doctor at the beginning of his career. The name of the doctor is Király András, and he happens to be the great love of Kalán's young wife from her unmarried years. The orthodox Stalinist Kalán's entire life is filled with his great passion, hunting. The suffocating, narrow lives of the prominent people in the area are slowly revealed to András.

Legends circulate in the public consciousness about Kex, which existed from late 1968 to the autumn of 1971. For baby boomers, it represented freedom and spontaneity. The band rejected the world of Communist cultural policy with its uniqueness and refusal to conform, something in which the best of the artistic intelligentsia and political dissidents saw value. They attended their concerts, and the film recalls their experiences. At times, one feels as if they are watching a spy film parody, as one gains insight into the secret files containing reports from agents embedded within the audience.

Two cars, four people, one tree. Sometimes we set off somewhere for something, and then things turn out differently than we planned. Friendship, love, lies and betrayal in two short stories. Different characters, different times, the question is the same...

A young artist living 'off-grid' in the mountains meets a young woman, visiting the village below, wandering in the forest; and they quickly fall in love.

Janos Flandera (Frigyes Funtek) is a student who is kept by an older woman in this depressing drama. When he applies to a prestigious school in Moscow, he is turned down because he is a gigolo. Not only is his scholarship request denied, he is sentenced to a year in prison at hard labor. Janos abandons the jealous older woman who helped deny his entrance to the school. Punished after defending a political prisoner, Janos takes solace in love affairs, but his union with the crippled daughter of a prominent political official puts his life in danger.

János is a 35 years old, rich, succesful single man, who plans to go on a long vacation with his brand new car, but he happens to fall in love at first sight…

An aspiring film student is denied a scholarship to the state-funded university when his father is thrown in jail. The man had stopped a train in order to facilitate the union between two old friends. The son then takes a job as a land surveyor and meets a Greek man who works towards the collective benefits of the peasants. The man is killed in a peasant uprising prompted by a bureaucratic boondoggle. The surveyor looks after the man's widow as his emerging political and social awareness leads him take a stand against government injustice. Another incident, in which gypsies are rounded up by state hygiene workers, further galvanizes the man's beliefs. He photographs the incident, and his work allows him to be accepted into the school from which he was previously denied admission.

Mrs. Takács, a widow and a postmistress living in the country, is about to marry her two daughters.

The film is an interpretation of everyday life and privacy as well as the first love-triangle story after 1945. Benkő Lajos, the country librarian, is stationed in the capital. In lack of a suitable apartment, his wife and children have to stay in the country.

A new National Theatre is built, and the director hires a famous Danish director for the premiere performance. The actors rehearse, the tractor and the construction workers work on the almost finished building. Everything seems to be on track, including the train, unfortunately, on the siding of the bridge next to the theatre. It's a little too loud and it's echoing into the main hall, so rehearsals are squeezed into a room that isn't very big. Bridge cushions are coming, even though it's cold and a bit like Christmas, but most importantly, the art is happening and the lead actress is indeed a queen. She falls in love with her partner and destroys him at the end of the performance. The role takes shape, only sometimes it is eerily similar to the real life of the artists. Will they live to see the premiere?

In Luxoria Prince Igor is preparing to accede to the throne and choose his wife on his 24th birthday. The mother Duchess's candidate is Duchess Xenia, but Igor loves Annie, the soap-maker's daughter.

The loving couple of this grotesque parable parody of the Kádár-regime, Mária and István row to an uninhabited, idyllic island. Soon crazy tent-pitchers swarm to the island, led by an official representative of the regime.

The black and white short Private History (1978) by Gábor Bódy is made up of amateur recordings. So what would the presumably well-off people owning their own cameras direct the lens at before the Second World War? On the one hand, their own families, and on the other, their everyday lives, their pride-and-joy cars, Lake Balaton holidays, happily smiling family members. History, which slowly washes away this idyllic world as the rain effaces paint from paper, initially only appears as ‘background noise’, parts of newsreels and an occasional speech by Hitler. The pictures become more sombre as the age also grows darker: marching soldiers and columns of civilians wearing the yellow star pass in front of the camera. Péter Tímár reconstructed the audio on the basis of lip-reading, noises and rattles reflective of the period. This film is the forerunner to Péter Forgács’s landmark series Private Hungary.

This grotesque historical film is a caricature of the narrow-minded and careerist oligarchs of the 20s. A young military officer stops the young jurist from killing himself and recommends him to his commander, lieutenant-colonel Doborján as a typist.

Set in Paris (which looks more like Budapest), the story concerns a murder investigation conducted by one Judge Henri Tessier. The audience is led to believe that Robert Petrovich, estranged husband of Tessier's sweetheart Marion, is responsible for the murder.

Eckermann (Laszlo Kistamas) is a listless computer whiz who spends most of his time lounging in a bathtub holding imaginary conversations with cartoon characters usually more popular with children than grownups. He has some friends who want to use his skills to steal some money from a local gambling joint. He works out a scheme for his friends and returns to his tub. At some point along the way, he is joined in the water by a lovely Czech refugee, who (perhaps inadvertently) makes it possible for him to die there.

Dia is a young female kickboxer who lives in the suburbs of Budapest with her mom and younger brother. Her dream is to compete in Germany where she can earn good money. All she has to do is win her upcoming championship. Two weeks prior to that Dia finds out that she is pregnant from her lover, who also happens to be her coach. Now she must face not only her competition, but time and the thought of abortion as well.

Hungarian television play based on a drama (crime fiction, thriller) by hungarian writer Tibor Hámori.

A heavily neurotic young man starts to see his father's ghost, and while he helps the spirit cross to the otherworld, something happens that they could never achieve in their common life: they finally understand each other.

Pataky Elemér arrives in the capital as a victim in his niece's divorce case. Having to meet the lawyer dr. Orbói István is, however, an alibi in an effort to get away from his quarrelsome wife, and to have some fun at the same time. He takes the lawyer with him.

A musical portrait film that offers a glimpse behind the scenes of decades of success, revealing the rarely seen world of personal struggles and joys. Friends, family members, and colleagues share their insights, while Ákos opens up—perhaps more honestly than ever before. With the aid of his most popular hits, the film transports the viewer back to the beginnings and also illustrates where Ákos stands today as both an artist and an individual.

Budapest, 1944. Three sisters are hiding in the apartment of a well-known doctor during the Holocaust. Their days are filled with paranoia, and it turns out that evil might come from unexpected places.

A philosophical look into András Ambrus, an alternative musician’s mind, exploring how he creates music and positions himself between the boundary of his thoughts and the world.

Marika is a young and beautiful girl, her family runs a fabric shop called White Peacock. Their life turns upside down when the train and the promise of the modern world arrives in their little hometown. However, not only the train arrives in the girl's life, but also two men: the rational and cunning Jenő Toll and the intelligent and dreamy Baron Pankotay. In Marika, the two men, new, strange feelings and family pressure break the usual balance. Marika must make a decision when the modern world threatens both the security and livelihood of her family. Her decision surprises everyone.

One completely unexceptional man. One emotionally unstable robot with a huge spaceship - and many, many, many aliens. On a mission to save (or destroy) the Galaxy.

On the surface it is an idyll. He lives a happily married life with Judit, a teacher and their eight-year old son, Dani. His best friend, Zoli is also his business partner and between the two of them they own four flourishing bakeries in Budapest. An enviable setting. But in the background a time bomb is ticking away. For years Andris has been living a passionate and blessed second life. The scene is Poland. Pretending to be making business trips, he has been spending half the year in Cracow, with Bea. She is a beautiful young woman and a church-painter. In this life Andris paints Creation in the chapel near the city. He is sensitive and gifted in what he does. In Pest he is a talented businessman, in Cracow an excellent artist. It is as if there were two people in him. What's more: he is satisfied with both lives. And since he is also an excellent conspirator, until this early morning he has never had to make a choice. But now Bea is pregnant, and would like to marry him...

This film, set at the beginning of the 17th century, is the first East-European "Eastern". Bocskai István orders the free Heyducks to shepherd a huge herd of cattle through the country torn to three parts, to the Dalmatian coast, where he can get weapons in exchange, for fighting the Austrians.

After her divorce leaves her feeling depressed and aimless, a disciplined forty-year-old woman named Teréz wanders through Budapest while grappling with a profound sense of isolation. She visits former lovers and estranged acquaintances in a desperate attempt to find a meaningful connection and reclaim the stability she has lost.

A young man finds his missing father's car, which appears to be a means of travelling through alternate universes.

A docu-comedy about politics in a world where citizens are dogs, politicians are dog breeders, national institutions are local dog breeders’ associations while the highest international forum is the FCI (Fédération Cynologique Internationale, the World Canine Organisation).

A comedy about the organisation of agricultural co-operatives. In the village of "Rendes", everybody has already entered the co-op, only the stubborn farmer, Bódog Balogh continues to resist. The leadership plays all their tricks and uses all their efforts, but all in vain.

After an unsuccessful marriage attempt Sasha needs to leave Budapest and her Hungarian boyfriend to continue her studies in the US. As the day progresses, their special bond makes separating in the morning a difficult choice.

A young boy lives alone on a rocky cliff. His dream is to connect with others.

On May 1, 2002, the narrator and his friend set off from Budapest in a thirty-year-old “White Power” Wartburg for a barn rave in Őrség, joined en route by a solar-tanned couple, the film’s composer and a handful of Amiga-loving party-goers. What begins as a laid-back Labour Day celebration - stew, pálinka, makeshift metal blasting from a boombox - rapidly swells into a nationwide legend as more revelers, a troublemaker and a student duo join in, even as the local police, an unforgiving schedule and baffled villagers threaten to shut them down. By dawn, amid flying profanity and folk-metal riffs no one can hear, they’re left asking each other: what story will this wild night become on film?

September 1952 in a mine in Northern-Hungary after an explosion water breaks in from the neighbouring shaft and fourteen miners become trapped. The whole country unites to save them.

The film takes place in Budapest in the 1920s. The teenage Rózsa Béla, the son of a washing-woman and a salesman born out of wedlock, gets employment as callboy in a luxurious hotel.