Discoveries from Hungary World Cinema

A father tries to deal with his troubled son who is involved in a hit-and-run accident.

A few survivors huddle together in the post-apocalyptic paradise of the Dome. There, they continue to worry about inflation, interior furnishing and the hordes of mutant frog-people at the gates.

The first signs of autumn are seen in a landscape along a river. Some villagers are stacking a bed of stone blocks on the river-bank to avoid more eroding. Others are occupied by ploughing, fishing or repairing. A small steamboat passes by. In the engine room a stoker is shovelling coal into the oven. Further down the river a small town is passed by the water. A rowing-team is training for coming races. Some biologists are looking at microbes from the water through a microscope. A group of workers are painting a new barge and push it into the river. When a small boy sees a racing boat, he leaves his sand-castle and runs along the river.

The weight of history becomes light in the hands of children. A group of kids become an interviewing team in a Budapest park, a graveyard of enormous old communist statues.

Joe Selfridge's stage partner Olga dies. Before her death, Joe entrusts his sister Vera, who lives in Warsaw and bears a striking resemblance to his sister, to Joe. Joe takes her into his production, a thrilling world number. During their performance in Budapest, Vera meets Baron Vajk at the hotel, who once loved Olga and now thinks he has found his lost love in Vera. But what will become of Joe without Vera?

Does everyone spend their evenings thinking about the best moment of the day? Do we appreciate them or take them for granted? Do we even notice the little joys in life that make us smile at the most unexpected moments? Do these moments pass us by or do we live them? Do we recall them in our weaker moments or do they fade into oblivion? This documentary, brought to life in animation, seeks answers to these questions. People are interviewed about the best moments of their day, of different genders, nationalities, ages and social backgrounds. The film gives us the space to overcome stereotypes and distances and helps us to discover the unity inherent in our humanity.

The film presenting the adult world from the perspective of children sharply contrasts the black-and-white world of parents founded on prohibitions with the sparklingly colourful world of imagination. Péter Szoboszlay’s first short is an adaptation of one of the early child monologue books by Éva Janikovszky.

A provincial boy named Brcko comes to the city of Zagreb looking for adventure.

Could I live anywhere else? Before Hanna moves abroad, she gets lost and rediscovers her Eastern European home country in a twisted journey.

Kata, a member of the national rhythmic gymnastics team, is exposed to extreme coaching techniques. The pressure is building, and the finals are near.

Acerbically humorous short about the ‘military olympics’ where competition is a matter of life or death.

A bankrupt landowner, Redwitz, emigrates to America fleeing his card debts and leaving his daughter in the care of his neighbour, the Baroness Rajk, at the cost of the family jewels. When the jewels are gone, Veronika is chased away from the house. She grows up to be a beautiful young woman and marries a gifted, but poor composer, George Tishler. The young man falls ill because of hard work and his treatment is financed by Baroness Rajk on the condition that they do not tell Veronika’s now rich father about her marriage and child. Moving into her father’s house, Veronika complies with this wish for the sake of her husband, but soon grows to enjoy the role of a spoilt and celebrated girl and ceases missing her previous, poorer lifestyle. She pays for her infidelity with the loss of her child.

The Empty King created a mythical figure and a whole world from grotesque, archetypal images. The drama was originally conceived as a student tirade against a teacher at Jarry's school, the Lyceum of Rennes. This teacher, Hébert, was the target of public ridicule. In 1888, at the age of 15, Jarry wrote a puppet play about the exploits of the Woolly Tartar and staged it to the amusement of his friends. The figure of Übü is a crude, cruel caricature of the foolish, selfish bourgeoisie as seen through the unrelenting gaze of a schoolboy; but this Rabelaisian figure, in all his falstaffian greed and cowardice, is more than a mere social satire. It is a terrifying picture of man's animal nature, his evil and cruelty. The Katona József Theatre in Budapest premiered Jarry's play in 1984, and it ran continuously for more than 10 years.

On the night of her birthday party, stranded between a distant boyfriend and a friend in love with her, Aliz unravels amid tension and lies until she realizes: the only way out is to choose herself.

Hungarian scientist and man of letters and leisure János Bátky (Iván Darvas) enjoys sparkling society life, spending his evenings in the company of various ladies. Ilonka, his long-suffering secret companion of several years, manages to make the bachelor almost truly fall in love – however, he is afraid of marriage and prefers to push her away.

A teenage girl is deep in thought in her bathroom trying to come to terms with an unexpected situation about motherhood.

In his so-called one-minute films, he raises the most important questions of today's human life in a caricature-like manner, but with deep humanity.

Based on a 1921 novel, a drama about a happily married couple whose young son unexpectedly dies, inevitably forcing the devastated duo to drift apart.

Short silent film about the main street of Košice (now Slovakia).

A documentary about advertisement and primarily following a man working as a billboard installer.

The wild peasant lad, Göndör Sándor, loves Bátki Tercsi, but the heart of the girl burns for the son of the mayor, Feledi Lajos. He is frantic with despair, and Finum Rózsi who is hopelessly in love with Sándor tries to calm him down in vain.

Benedek is a young football fan who will soon have to decide whether to to follow a team for the rest of his life or walk his own path.

Experimental short film.

The visual style of the film is inspired by ancient tribal symbols, which constantly morph into each other. They represent life in a womb-like frame.

The wealthy Ottó Dárday is angry with his heirless relatives and marries his maid Julcsa. Only six months after his death does she discover that he has left her everything. Then his nephew István Dárday asks her to at least give him a job in the house so he can get married. Julcea is being shunned for her fortune by a conman, but is exposed. Who will get the fortune?

Anders Østergaard’s film is an investigative look at the year the Berlin Wall fell, documenting the events that took place in Hungary as a prelude to the dramatic changes in November 1989. The director recreates the events and leads the audiences deep into the politicians’ secret meeting rooms by using a mix of interviews, archive material and reconstructed scenes and dialogues.

During a warm summer night, Róbert, a naive 17 year old, and Ferenc, the gypsy member of the high school drama group, are forced to deal with prejudices that have existed longer then themselves.

A conflict arises between Father and Son in the family business.

Eszter is taken on a journey down the rabbit hole.

A story about a theater company's prop girl, who knows all the lines of all the plays by heart, but has no chance to show her talent, until an unexpected event occurs.

There’s only one matchstick left in the box. This stick, this ordinary thing is the protagonist of the Mitch-Match series. The character embarks on a journey in every episode and always returns to the box. This ordinary thing is an opportunity for endless playful and imaginative adventures evoking everyone’s fantasy world.

The protagonist of this farce is the enthusiastic, bald, spectacled Krebsz, an employee at the Prime and Sample Institute. He alerts the whole village to organise a beauty contest in the weed-field of Balatonszutykos. Hoping to win the grand prize, the leading role in a two-hour colour-film, the girls make all efforts and use all their tricks.

Although it crosses six countries and is over 3,500 kilometers long, the Zambezi is one of the least known rivers in the world. So it's time to take to the water and discover this mystical, ever-changing river, whose mood changes from day to day, kilometer to kilometer, and which is the very essence of life for millions of animals and people in this often drought-stricken, water-scarce region!

One of the largest deer farms in Europe becomes a scene of conflict, in an atmosphere that transcends physical space. The pulse is a way to seize connections and disruptions within the Human-Animal interaction, pulling us away or drawing us closer to Nature.

The film follows a boxing coach and his trainee. They are from the infamous Ghetto in the middle of Budapest. Misi, an ex member of the mafia, while recovering in a prison hospital after a shootout, turned to God and left behind his criminal past. As his “mission” he started a local community boxing club aimed at young children from troubled families. Zoli is one of these kids. Zoli lives in a one bedroom apartment with 5 other people. Despite his young age he has to face up to the responsibility of providing for his family. He has a tough decision to make. He either becomes a professional boxer or follows in the footsteps of his mobster father.

Péter Ilosvay and Lina Vásárhelyi are wife and husband, but don't come along with each other. After the divorce they go on living under the same roof for they are unable to agree on the common wealth.

Rhapsody in Blue Jeans is a stop-motion animation composed to Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, which in a series of smart sequences projects a grotesque image of the all-standardizing universe that is denim. In the film’s dynamic intro, all the accessories in a sewing kit are reshaped to become actors in archetypal Western chase, saloon and gunfight scenes.

The children of Somsabátony decide to build the country's first children's railway as they very much would like to make their birth-place famous.

The first part of Judit Eleks long-term documentary portraits the lives of two girls in a small Hungarian village: Marika and Ilonka. As they grow up, they have to decide between working and learning or marrying at the age of 15 and living up to their parents' expectations.

Experimental short movie adaptation of István Örkény's one-minute story "Information" by director Annabella Schnabel.

Pure Virtual Function is an abstract meditation on the representation of violence, the connection of virtual and real aggression. The film was made from painted 35 mm film strips and sound recording from Iraq war.

When two young students go down on a spiral to insanity, they discover the meaning of life

Once upon a time back during the high noon of the cheerful gray Kádár regime, there was a teenage girl living in Nagykovácsi who jumped from the third floor because of unrequited love and loneliness, but miraculously lived to bear three children, try her luck with five different husbands, to bury her teenage son, to stifle her grief in drink, to help people more unfortunate than herself, to show the viewers what a truly passionate life is like by participating in a documentary film.

His granny visits Peti at the Sziget festival.

Three young people talk about their wildest erotic dreams. This illustrated, documentary-styled dialogue presents a vivid, kinky fantasy world. "Beddreams" celebrates sexual freedom in the language of animation.

The third part of the BP Underground series is about Budapest's underground electronic music scene. Just like the other episodes it also evokes the emergence and growth of the genre with its unique visual world and a lot of archive footage. Among other things, it seeks to discover how Budapest as a center shaped the subculture.