Discoveries from Hungary World Cinema

What do an anti-globalism terrorist group and a telemarketing company have in common? Maybe they are just the two sides of the same story.

Zeke, the agile young meteorologist finds out at once that the Szélervé Meteorological Research Institute is dealing exclusively with illegal poultry export. What is more, the genial director Keve invented an artificial hen laying 150 gigantic eggshells at a time.

An unreliable druggie has some moral dilemmas after a bad break up.

József works at the largest still-operational grain silo in Budapest. He’s been doing this work for more than 30 years, and lives in a container home next to the structure, where trucks and trains rumble past his window. When he is lowered into the ten-story-deep silos to clean them, he looks like a scuba diver at work. These scenes are captured with stunning, contrast-rich camerawork, and ably edited with a strong sound design.

Herbert lives a happy childhood in a small town in early-century Hungary. His new friend Ödön brings colour and excitement into his life, and they find a hiding place together in a warehouse. One day, an escaped girl from an institution is locked up here, but Herbert later releases her, and loses his friend forever...

Animated hijinks of a man whose car just will not start, no matter what he does.

Komora, a young painter and his friends, Mari, a teacher, and the elderly doctor, Szabó, buy a barrack-building situated at the foot of the stone mine of Badacsony. Earlier, the place served as an internment camp. Now, they intend to establish a camp with workshop sessions for fine artists. Mari and the painter fall in love.

The linguistic ordeal of a Hungarian and a Finnish guy on an international flight in the European night.

The film is about the lack of human touch. The dystopia is set in a world where an unknown virus makes people unable to touch each other. Mother, father, son: we confront the problem through a Hungarian family, and search for a solution with them in this extraordinary road movie. It is no coincidence that the story takes place in winter. And it is no coincidence that it takes place by Europe's largest lake. Where the landscape is icy and cold and blue and white. And only in flashbacks do we find ourselves in the warm summer. When all seemed well.

Miklós Jancsó makes fun of his reputation for creating exceptional visuals in "A nagy agyhalál AKA The Great Brain Death." It is the most difficult vignette and while visually stunning, remains difficult to decipher, she breaks with allegorical storytelling.

The carefree squandering of Baron Inokay's wealth, the steward Gáspár Borly - who is called "the old scoundrel" behind his back - is rumored to have been stealing from the Baron's family for years and has amassed a large fortune. Baroness Mária Inokay, who was raised in Vienna and is destined to be Count Balassa, returns home. However, Mária loves her childhood playmate, Gáspár Borly's grandson. Old Borly is eventually convicted of the theft, but his will reveals that he only saved what he could and left all the valuables he had embezzled to Mária. After this, nothing can stand in the way of their previously seemingly hopeless love.

The history of numbers from simple addition to the development of complex mathematical items.

What should you do if you realise at the door of the delivery room that you can't handle not only children, but women too? Why is it our fault if they have bad dreams? Why is it wrong to answer honestly when asked if I have lost weight? Is it worth giving our newly licensed wife advice in traffic? Is there a moment in a woman's life when she says: Thank you, I have enough shoes, I don't need any more. And why, despite all this, does our heart still beat when she walks into the room? Well, these questions are not answered in this performance. But it does raise many similar questions about the difficulties, the beauty and the joys of living together. (Between you and me: the difficulties.) A one-man comedy by Sándor Csányi playing eight different characters.

Christmas is approaching. Two poor men try their almost to acquire some food for the Christmas table of their families. During their adventures, they try to cheat each other, because both would like to acquire the entire loot. Finally because they cannot cheat each other, they share everything in a brotherly manner.

The Hungarian word "alkotás" (artwork) has a dual meaning – it can refer both to the process of creation and to the finished artwork. The film tells the story of how a canvas comes alive, how playful, abstract forms are created, each one carrying its own human narrative.

Peter and his dog visit a bird exhibition and then set off on a “bird hunt” aboard a helicopter...

The toil of an ink blot until, finally, a letter emerges from it. The abstract film draws attention to the global issue of illiteracy.

A look at the present use of several Hungarian castles whose former owners in some cases are still around, but kept out of sight for being relics of a society the new rulers finished off.

Repetitive still standing movement, an exploration of the visual image for its own sake. A projection of mental images, which are formed while listening to music. From the simple act of drawing a line, to the intricate movement and complex structure of animation that is able to self-generate.

There is no school on the mine site. Teacher Gábor Nagy is enthusiastic about the organisation. The chief engineer Laskó, on the pretext that there are not enough children to open a school, ruins his whole job, has his men throw the benches out of the engine room, which has been converted into a classroom, and chases the children away. The teacher, however, does not give up the fight and, together with the miners, continues to fight for the school. Eventually, all the problems are solved, new families arrive on the site, whose children have reached the required number of children and can continue their education.

As a last chance in his career, the young acrobat with a broken leg, Sajek Oszkár, attempts to obtain the wonderful secret from the retired old artist, Uncle Binder Lipi, a secret which was a world hit.

Éva Balogh travels to Pest to attend her friend's wedding, but the wedding is cancelled because the groom backs out at the last minute (for the third time). Éva mistakenly blames Paul Murray, the world-famous pianist, for the broken marriage promise. The pianist, who changes his girlfriends frequently, mistakes the temperamental, snappy jazz girl for one of his forgotten old flames. By the time the truth comes out, Eve and Murray are in love, and another slap - now undoubtedly for Murray - can't keep them apart.

To the memories of my mother.

The film follows seven days of a young gypsy, with a short excerpt from each day. Through these brief 'life' images, the film gives a dark and fragmented portrait of Kristóf, similar in style to Hungarian fiction documentaries of the 1970s and 1980s. A life at a standstill with no possibility of change is documented in the figure of the protagonist: Kristóf has neither the social background nor the education to turn his fate around.

Living in an orphanage, the twins aren't visited by their mother, even on their birthday, so they run away during the night to look for her.

Film-sociography on the families forced into the Hortobágy labour camps between 1950-53.

Early Hungarian silent film from Michael Curtiz

Dr. Ádám Koltay flees the city. Although he is the darling of society, he has grown weary of the emptiness of social life. He tents in the pure, unspoilt world of the snow-covered mountains, but on his first day, an unexpected event occurs: he must save the life of a young girl who has fallen off a cliff. In gratitude, she offers him an invitation to join the hustle and bustle of a nearby noisy resort, but Adam steals a kiss from her instead. Eve vows revenge, ready to do anything to disturb his peace.

One day, a young mother leaves her family behind and sets off into the unknown.

Gertrúd is a middle-aged music teacher. She lives with her art-restorer husband and their teenage son. She is weary of family life, and her relationship with her husband leaves much to be desired. Gertrúd’s settled world is turned upside down when a former student of hers, the beautiful Albán, suddenly shows up. Her presence prompts questions about the past, present, and future. Reality, memories and dreams intermingle dangerously, and the old family roles slowly begin to change. “I wanted this film to be like an enchanted box full of stories and surprises”, Péter Gothár explains. “Its drawers are meant to open in a mysterious rhythm, offering joy and food for thought. First, there was the music of Bartók, which then became the film's main organizing element. It formed around the music – this whole family story full of love and irony”.

The native people of the surrealistic land of Superbia, where men and women form separate societies, face the changes sparked by the first equal couple in their history.

Félix, a somewhat clod-hopping young man, finds himself in the Grand Hotel of Little Lagonda, barefooted and in pyjamas. He is soon followed by a hooded, fat and leggy gangster. This is all the more strange as the hotel is under quarantine with the pretext of a plague-epidemic, in order to make it a suitable ground for the negotiations of certain oil-companies.

An elderly couple in the traffic. The wife chitchats, warns, controls. She is a policeman, a GPS and a commentator, all at once. The husband growls or strikes out. This is how their world works. But life is a constant replanning...

Residing within the confines of a dimly lit night shop in Brussels, an undocumented Indian immigrant, fondly known as Happy, aspires to provide a bright future for his wife and daughter back home. Yet, the ever-present threat of discovery and his longing for his beloved family inflict fatigue, evoking surreal visions and sounds.

A little girl and her cat accidentally travel to a mysterious world through their washing machine. They arrive at a strange island where they meet its habitants and through an adventure they try to look for their way home. The little girls’ actions set something in motion that leads to a secret getting revealed about a long forgotten mistake.

Füge lives with an 18-year-old girl Nina who dances and sings in a disco. Despite their age difference, their relationship is mainly erotic. Füge has a little daughter Fanny from a one-day relationship. Füge adore Fanny, who is often at their place for safekeeping. Füge is forced into an operation in Szeged, where he has to do business with a local underlord - at any cost. Meanwhile, Nina, an extraordinary beauty, is increasingly being discovered by photographers and the fashion world. Füge, as he travels down to Szeged to complete the assignment, accidentally bumps into Ágota (his lover in the first two films) on the train. They haven't seen each other for 15 years. She has married a detective in Italy.

The recurring protagonists of the movie is an osprey family and a young otter. Through their story, the animals living in the wetlands of the Carpathian Basin and their rarely seen behaviour are presented. Deers, Hungarian grey cattle, asps, catfish, bee-eaters, hooded crows appear in the movie, as well as places like the backwaters of the Tisza River, the Danube and its tributaries, the Hortobágy, the Balaton and the Gemenc Forest. The movie presents one year of the animals living the wetlands and floodplain forests, from winter to next summer. A nature documentary about the lands, fauna and nature-related traditions of Hungary.

The romantic adventures of a wealthy factory owner with a beautiful Gypsy girl, who, overcome with jealousy, kidnaps the man’s child while he investigates (incognito) the disloyal and corrupt foreman in his own factory. His disguise is his old work overall in which he started his career many years before. The dramatic and spectacular work is the earliest surviving feature in Hungarian film history, starring legendary figures from the Hungarian stage: Gyula Hegedűs, who has a street named after him in Budapest, and Elza Szamosi, one of the first Puccini female singers of American and European opera stages.

On a summer afternoon, someone drips coffee, someone feeds a pigeon, someone kills a wasp, someone dies, someone runs away, someone copies, someone listens to the radio, someone makes a phone call, someone... And there may be some correlation between these things. Based on János Szántai's short story.

Joseph II and his adjutant, Kléber travel to Transylvania in disguise.

An elderly lifeguard gets his medical diagnosis: He has to abstain from all sporting activity. This would not be a problem if he did not happen to be an enthusiastic swimming coach and ex-Olympic champion, who is racing with his younger self night after night; still not able to make peace with himself.