Discoveries from Hungary World Cinema

A train's passengers tries to make the engine even faster, using very unique ways.

Using funds provided by her sister, bank clerk Olga Vass spends six weeks treating her tuberculosis at an upscale Tatra hotel where she falls in love with the resort's ski instructor.

Isti, a junior official in the ministry, is a happy husband and father. He works all day to support his family, and gives his wife all the money she needs to bring home, as a proper husband should. But one day his colleagues are talking about female philandering, and Isti's jealousy flares up for no reason. In addition, he is let home early from work because of the holiday, causing a bit of a disturbance because his wife hasn't finished lunch yet. Isti is suspicious of everything, even her friend Évi gets her worked up. She and the woman have a row over four crowns, and Isti runs away from home to see her friend, the skirt-chasing Füredit. The two men set off together into the Pest night...

The longer Zoé has been living the seemingly perfect life of an influencer on social media, the more detached she gets from reality and herself day after day.

Hungarian tales around the end of the regime(s).

A hardcore soccer ultra, Gyula, and his wife, Mariann, long for a baby. But it turns out that Gyula is sterile and when their plans to adopt also go up in smoke, Mariann does a deal behind her husband's back: they will take in the soon to be born child of a young Roma woman. The ensuing state of affairs turns all of their lives upside down. While Gyula has to continually hide the truth from his racist friends, surprises await him in his private life, and when Cupid's arrow strikes him from the most unexpected direction, he is faced with both comical situations and acute moral dilemmas.

The second part of Judit Eleks long-term documentary about two girls and their lives in a small Hungarian village. What has become of their dreams and hopes?

Bálint Zeke, the honest old miller of the village, leaves his water-mill to Anna, his only daughter, while the will also provides for the mill to be managed by Forintos Mátyás, a young miller, whom he has been raising since he was very young and treats as his own son. The two young people seem to "like each other anyway", and their marriage would make the old man happy.

A couple, pushing forty, are heading to a medical conference in a countryside hotel. While travelling, the woman spots a man slapping a girl at the side of the road. Her husband claims he had not seen anything. They turn back to investigate.

Aron is a 10-year old lonely boy. He lives with his mother in a room of a junk motel. He helps her run the bar. Hovering around the adults, Aron creates an extraordinary imaginary world in which the main characters are his father, a song, and a music box. One day a new guest arrives at the motel and Aron's world is turned upside down. He has to choose where he belongs.

A girl celebrating her birthday alone hears a haunting but familiar voice and sets out to find its source...

Magda longs to move from respectable poverty to the carefree world of the rich. Against her mother's and uncle's admonition, she elopes with her lover, the frivolous Sándor Tomory, who promises her a life of luxury. Her happiness doesn't last long, the young man soon tires of her and leaves her. In despair, Magda flees to suicide. She is rescued and cared for in her uncle's house. Here she learns that Tomory has been arrested for forging bills of exchange. The uncle, "the watchmaker of the soul", tries to save this lost soul. He frees the boy, giving him a chance to start over. Tomory regrets his recklessness and vows to change. He asks Magda to marry him. Disappointed, she at first spurns the unfaithful young man, but when she is convinced that he has truly reformed, she forgives him and marries him.

Máté’s moving out of Luca’s place is not easy, as they are unable to face a suddenly appearing shadow of their past.

"Once upon a time there was an old gypsy. He had never left the hill where he lived. He never went to the inn, nor read the newspaper or watched Dallas. He was a proud man who liked to tell stories. Even though he avoided the church, he knew what the fear of God was. The old gypsy was blessed by three beautiful daughters whom he loved more than anything else. The two older ones soon found husbands, but the youngest Sarolta only walked up hill and down dale. She was the apple of his eye..." This is the beginning of Romani Kris. The film shows the gypsy Lovér and the village idiot Tamáska on their dramatic and adventurous journey through a Hungarian landscape at times lush and at times barren to present a lyrical, magical and unforgettable story.

The three Szelid brothers go on a road trip after the disappearance of their father and death of their mother.

Hungary, 1948. The Stalinist regime is settling in on the ruins of the war. A young woman meets a stranger in an elevator. She recognizes him from another life, and soon has to make a complicated decision.

​Fifteen-year-old Jutka and her friend Zsuzsa leave their rural village for Budapest to work in a textile factory and seek independence. Their pursuit of freedom quickly unravels as they face the grim realities of industrial life, a transition compounded by Zsuzsa's unplanned pregnancy and Jutka's own search for stability in a harsh environment.

Amusing burlesque about a cannonball liberated. The pathway of our spherical friend is not restricted by temporal or spatial dimensions, and neither is the soaring imagination of director Líviusz Gyulai.

Hungarian TV movie about King Béla III of Hungary

György Dobrai's movie about the prostitution on the streets. Rákóczi Square is the center of the prostitution in Budapest. Everybody knows this much. But not too many people actually know what really goes on behind the scenes. This documentary attempted to cover these unknown spots of the business. Nude screens, rude language and the forbidden shadows of the Hungarian Socialism - the movie was banned for years in that time.

In the mid-1960s, the Communist Party saw that the time had come to attack some of the key figures of domestic economic life, showing the country and the world who was the master of the house. Lajos Onódy, the successful catering industry manager, was selected for the main role of the showcase trial.

Peter makes a mechanical canine in the likeness of Félix the pooch. The robot dog gets top marks when it comes to chasing cats, racing around and dancing. The problems only start when Peter is in need of help.

Three strangers appear unexpectedly as the cold early spring night falls on a ranger's lodge. The ranger has to face the eerie situation, while being reminded of his solitude.

This two-part film examines the plight of the working class. In part one, an elderly factory laborer goes to work in his last days before he is forced to retire. He leaves the factory life he has always known and goes home to his wife. In the second part, a young farm boy goes off to an industrial trade school to prepare for the very work the old man left behind. The old man loses his freedom by forced retirement while the young man loses his freedom by becoming a worker faced with a lifetime of factory work.

Andrea is single-handedly building a safer life for her two children, after having put her abusive ex-partner in prison. However, her efforts are constantly challenged by the small Transylvanian community she lives in. Most villagers openly support her ex-partner, blaming Andrea for fabricating false accusations against him.

The first generation suffers, the second remains silent, the third asks questions. Three women lived and grew up in the Ceausescu dictatorship, which left behind unspoken things. My task is to ask questions.

After more than 50 years of longing, Marika Barta decides to reach out for her first love, the former dance band member. Marika's six years old granddaughter, Manka persuades her to visit the lost sweetheart.

Documentary screenplay, based on letters and writings of the composer Béla Bartók. Musical works composed throughout his life are placed in context alongside the composer's writings from the time. Extracts from all his main works from 1900 to 1945 are included.

Struggling artist Feri falls in love with boarding school student Vera. In order for them to be able to meet, Feri's bumbling friend Poznay poses as Vera's uncle and picks her up from school once a week. When Vera's father unexpectedly shows up at the school, the young romance is in danger.

In the spring of 1945, in bombed-out Budapest, a powerful boy, young István Kovács, recently arrived from the mountains, and a girl from Pest, Juli Szandál, who has lost everyone, meet. They fall in love and move into a hut in the suburbs. Juli is frightened by the giant's sincere feelings and naivety. Their love, which started off idyllically, is partly marked by this and partly by the difficulties of the post-war period...

"Good evening... I'd like to report a murder... Where do I live? In the basement... but I'm not there now... I'm on the top floor, in the boss's room... Ah, I don't know who the body is... You like to know, I'm the cleaning lady... How can I check if he's just taking a nap? Maybe, but he's got a dagger sticking out of his back the size of half my arm... So I lock all the doors... don't touch anything... keep my mouth shut and don't tell anyone until you arrive..." - Mrs. Piper, the cleaning lady, begins the eerily cheerful, twisty story with her broken sentences, but at the end we are left with no answer as to why Mrs. Pipper talks so much.

The corpulent and ageing Ivicz, once an excellent baker, works as a deliverer now. He lives alone. At the weekends following the toilsome weekdays he is the boss. He regularly travels to the country, to work as the incorruptible referee of third class national soccer games.

Adaptation of Elinor Glyn's romance novel When the Hour Came.

When two students try to make a movie, they accidentally discover the ancient slopness monster. In desperate times they need the help of a real hero, a suli hero.

It is not easy for a foreigner to learn the Hungarian language today, but it wasn't the case either when the example sentences were put into the mouths of Romanian weavers and Chinese comrades in language books. Short film director Béla Vajda wrote the screenplay for his award-winning graduation film in Oberhausen together with his film college classmate Gyula Maár.

The story played by civilian players is laid in a Transdanubian village, where on the initiative of the municipality doctor the local inhabitants wish to build a social welfare home as volunteers, with the support of the local co-operative and the state farm. Having first consented to the plan, the leadership of the county starts opposing the project because of the plan to build a social welfare home called the City of the Happy Aged to be established by the county. Both parties take the field for their ideas and the battle starts.

This pulsating collage animation interwoven with folk art elements is a warning of the dangers of extinction, in which an organism is connected to each day of the week.

After his father’s death, Tamás has no choice but to take over the family business: a mobile pet-incineration service. His apparent indifference towards both the animals and their grieving owners makes it hard for him to comfort them, even as he must confront his own loss and the complicated memory of his late father.

At 75, Tibor spends his days alone in the house where he lived for many years with his wife Ilona, who died. Ilona has been a ghost in Tibor's everyday life since her death. Tibor and Ilona's apparent peace is interrupted by the appearance of their daughter Edit and granddaughter Réka when they are forced to sell their grandfather's house.

Documentary about the Siberian Soviet Gulag camps where innocents often ended up and many didn't come back at all.

Little Árpád steals his father's most precious treasure to give to his beloved as a gift. He tries to cover up his deed, for which he pays a heavy price. It's all in vain, all in vain.

After a load of trouble, the weasel works out the way into the pantry where he stuffs himself with everything he finds there and finally his own greed is the cause of his downfall.

After losing his wife, the aged organist uses music to process the grief.

Everybody knows that the captains of the hussars are a wild bunch. This was no different for Gábor Bagodi, who was famous far and wide for his revelry. No wonder his wife left him after a day of revelry. He packed up their little girl and left. Bagodi didn't mourn her much, he went on with his life. As fate would have it, he met a beautiful lady, Baroness Eva Lichtenstein...