Discoveries from Hungary World Cinema

A film about two 10-year-old boys who try to save the world and their friendship.

This “Béla Tarr-esque” short presents a small pub right before closing time. The story is about a chess game which turns bad after the final move.

Igéző portrays the life of the unsociable stranger , András, who arrives at the place of his exile and slowly makes friends with Miska, the charcoal-burner.

The story, which was motivated by the Spanish flu epidemy in 1918, goes about total helplessness. In a non-identifiable country at the beginning of the century an organisation kidnaps a doctor from his apartment and alongside with several others transports him into a camp.

In the small Romanian town of Deva, Kato, a teen girl living in an orphanage, gets electrocuted while drying her hair. This apparently banal event will completely turn things upside down around her. The orphanage is invaded by electricians, and a new volunteer is hired to help restore order. Kato will become infatuated by her to the point of reconsidering the way she views her world.

On 26th of August 1939 the Ocania1 steamboat leaves the New York harbour with the ex-spy Maria Holm on board. Now she is the owner of a dressmaker's showroom, but for just one last time is taking important documents to Europe for the sake of peace.

In the mid-1980s, a young rural woman gave birth to a child with physical and intellectual disabilities. She fought persistently for her family's happiness alongside her abusive husband, but her efforts were doomed to fail. More than thirty years have passed since then; the girl has become a woman, yet she has been unable to process her experiences. This is why she started a blog, which quickly gained hundreds of thousands of readers. Éva Péterfy-Novák's story is about moving forward after loss and the process of acceptance in an era and environment where admitting mistakes and living with differences were unwelcome.

A young warehouse worker suffers under the monotony of his life. One day, a new figure enters his world: a television host, who through small, seemingly insignificant events lures him into the realm of the commercial broadcasts. The man seizes the opportunity, but pays a heavy price for his decision.

We're in a flatlet, in the middle of two young people's relationship crisis. The boy cheated on the girl. They are both in quarantine, right in the middle of a pandemic. The situation gets more complicated by a chat message, which also gives the boy cause for jealousy. After they both get tired of the commonplaces, they reveal their doubts about their relationship in a surprisingly honest way. They are willing to go to the extremes to find out if they have a future together.

Éva, an orphaned mine heiress, is on the verge of gaining her inheritance from Count Rudolf. In order to retain control, Rudolf aims to provoke a worker's revolt against her. Éva then meets Jura, one of the miners, who claims he was raised from birth within the mine by a mysterious witch named Anna.

During WW II, a Hungarian child in a concentration camp is saved and raised by a Polish family. After 19 years, the young woman publishes a letter in local papers looking for her long-lost family. This documentary from Laszlo Nadasy follows the search for her relatives, commenting on the realities she faced in the camp and the emotions of those involved in her life.

The villa in the story of László Vadnai is for sale. The owner goes away and leaves the house to his butler, who also entrusts its safekeeping to an old friend. The friend immediately moves in with his niece, and two swindlers appear. But who is the seller and who is the buyer, and why the villa has to be sold at all, is a question that is only answered satisfactorily at the end of the film, after a lot of wall-crawling humour.

After a long time, Ákos visits his sick father, Ágoston, who is being cared for by Ilona, an elderly carer. Father and son have a chance to connect after Ilona's unexpected illness leaves them alone.

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.

The chalk-drawing animated film is based on Richard Brautigan’s novel: „Revenge of the lawn”. This is a remembrance, the story of a childhood memory about grandma’ and grandpa’. After the death of grandpa’, Jack took over the domesticities, and delivered grandma’s bourbon on his truck. Grandma’s whisky served as a salutary refreshment during prohibition times. Her house wore the traces of two accidents. The film tells the story of these accidents.

An intimate sneak-peek into a contemporary taboo topic: intimate lives of the female migrants away from home. Olha is a migrant care worker in Naples, whose life could fill up a few telenovelas. And yet, it is so similar to the lives of many Ukrainian women in Italy. Will Olha be able to give Naples a chance and find a true feeling among the routines of her transnational life? The full-length film is based on a short documentary film of the same title by the same director, which was filmed as part of the Verzio Film Festival's DocLab workshop in 2016.

An engineer from the city inherits an old, run-down mill, which is adjacent to a castle belonging to a young, attractive and spoiled woman named Marta - for who he falls in a heartbeat. Produced in 1941.

A frog, a mouse and a sausage become friends and the trio starts living together. The usual cook, sausage, gets tiered of his job, and declares that from now on the rest will have to cook.

The particular interest of György Szomjas’s short documentary is that it immortalizes the work of the Szeged University Stage headed by István Paál (although it is not named in the film), which after 15 March 1973 was officially recategorized from ‘tolerated’ to ‘banned’. On hearing about events in Chile in early March of that year (a temporary upsurge in popularity for the left wing at elections), young students dramatized the news first in spontaneous play and then in directed exercises. Viewed in the knowledge of what subsequently occurred in Chile, the group’s liberated acting is tinted with tragedy.

About the first Hungarian Beauty Contest in 1985, that led to a tragic end.

The story happens in 1989 in the suburbs of Budapest, where the neighbor maintains an underground worker's guard training base, while the youngsters fall victim to a mistakenly posted letter.

An upbeat generational film, rich in both comedic and dramatic elements, and a twisted coming-of-age story set in a unique and unique environment. His young protagonist refuses to accept what society in an industrial town has to offer and expects of him, so he rebels by staying outside and finding his own way, pushing himself into ever steeper and more illegal situations.

A little girl manages to escape the horrors of the Holocaust. Decades later she is confronted by a group of Neo Nazis, and history repeats itself. Based on a true story.

Mr. Dezső and Rezső are selecting the heroes for their new operetta. They represent different tastes and styles, and keep arguing about the casting of the four men and four women.

Somewhere in a small village in Hungary three public workers dig the same ditch year after year for aid, while they talk about the same day after day. One of them, Béla learns that the TV news showed a former classmate of them, Frike Herner, whose father was the village's policeman when they were children. Béla recalls how at that time a childish conflict between the two of them grew to a great extent. As he remembers more and more details, begins to realize that human destinies repeat themselves from generation to generation and are just as constant as the always-the-same ditch in front of them. Comical and sometimes painfully thought-provoking story through present and past try to find the answers to questions ranging from the individual to the entire world: are we in God's hand, or is God inside us, and can we shape our own destiny? The film is based on the play of the popular Hungarian writer, János Háy.

Pál Utrius is twenty three years old and in love with his sister.

A short animated story that depicts the sexual yearnings of a man through a series of hallucinatory dream-like and surreal sequences.

Martin is faced with a decision at work: either sign an investment project under pressure from his bosses, thereby redeeming his job opportunity in Germany, or confront and jeopardize everything he has achieved so far. The world holds up a mirror to him at every turn: the indifference of passersby, the dissatisfaction of his wife, the undeserved admiration of his little son... For him, who once risked his life for his country, who once saw more clearly what is wrong and what is right...

Péter, a literary critic, is tasked by the secret police to persuade Social Democratic politician, Anna Kéthly, who has been living in exile for decades, to return home.

A country boy comes to Budapest to study and tries desperately to retain his integrity amid the corruption of the capital.

On the edge of Europe, middle-aged Eliot wakes up in a crashed car and realizes he doesn't want to leave. In this unsafe space, he finds the only safety he's known. Is there a 'way out'?

Young Hussar captain falls in love-at-first-sight with classy young blonde, who turns out to be the sister of his captain.

Miklós is a young, talented and thoughtful architect who is all about his work. He doesn't loiter or run after women, but he is also eager to have a happy family. When it comes to building a new villa, he falls madly in love with the future owner, Klara. She is also attracted to him, but Klara is already a bride and can't decide what she wants. In this impossible situation, Miklós seeks solace in a singer, Lola, despite his love for Klárit. Lola feels this too, and wants to attract him by any means possible...

A documentary about prostitutes

Thirteen new adventures of Peanuts the Snail Boy and Babouca the ladybird.

Love you like an animal

A New Year's Eve special.

A young woman is killed after falling off her horse. Fate then shows the grief-stricken father what his daughter's life would have been like had she lived, but it is not how he had hoped.

The bitter film grotesque focuses on a Socialist Mafioso. Vágó, the enthusiastic young propagandist is put up at Apuka (Daddy) of the outskirts, Dávid. In the hands of Apuka everything becomes money and he skilfully avoids inspection and controls. In order to help his little family, he sells his rabbit husbandry as mutton, he practises usury on and blackmails his tenants, their rooms are operated as cigar stores.

Gráci has been recently released from a reformatory school. His old gang would like to involve him in a new action, but he hesitates. His past record is bad enough already, and he would not like to get into new trouble.

In Budapest, an elderly mother teaches her Hungarian-speaking daughter the difference between active and passive tenses in the mother's Indonesian mother tongue.

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...

Set in the allegorical space of an abandoned room, a frustrated mind feels the distorting effects of aggression and paranoia—including visions of butterflies, the Mona Lisa, and nuclear fallout.

Kis Katalin and Varga Jóska are getting married. During their honeymoon they are preparing plans for the future. Katalin, however, seems to lag behind both in her studies and the work competition, becoming a couch potato version of a wife. Jóska, instead of trying to help, does nothing else than his work.

Colby finds himself in a strange situation. Strapped to a chair, he gets into a heated argument with the Devil in the middle of a circus, and is forced to confront his greatest failings.